IX. 1792. CHAP. the Electors are no longer worthy of your resentment: fear has prostrated them at your feet. You must anticipate his hostility. Now is the time to show the sincerity of your declaration, a hundred times repeated, that you are resolved to have freedom or death. Death! you have no reason to fear it-consider your own situation and that of the Emperor-your constitution is an eternal anathema against absolute thrones: all kings must hate it; it incessantly acts as their accuser; it daily pronounces their sentence: it seems to say to each,To-morrow you will not exist, or exist only by the tolerance of the people.' I will not say to the Emperor with your committee, Will you engage not to attack France or its independence?' but I will say, 'You have formed a league against France, and therefore I will attack you!' and that immediate attack is just, is necessary, is commanded alike by imperious circumstances and your oaths." "The French," said Fauchet, on the same day, "after having conquered their own freedom, are the natural allies of all free people. All treaties with despots are null in law, and cannot be maintained in fact, without involving the destruction of our Revolution. We have no longer occasion for ambassadors or consuls; they are only titled spies. When others wish our alliance, let them conquer their freedom; till then, we will treat them as pacific 1 Hist. Parl. Savages. Let us have no war of aggression; but war with xii. 9, 14., the princes who conspire on our frontier-with Leopold, 324, 319. who seeks to undermine our liberties cannon are our No. 7. negotiators, bayonets and millions of freemen our ambassadors."1 Jom. i. 323, Pièces Just. 105. nary efforts and the Girondists Brissot was resolved, at all hazards, to have a war with Extraordi- Austria: he was literally haunted day and night by the of Brissot idea of a secret Austrian cabinet which governed the Court, and was incessantly thwarting the designs of the revoluto force on tionists. If the Girondists could have reconciled themselves to the King, they would have disarmed Europe, turned the emigrants into ridicule, and maintained peace. a war. CHAP. IX. 1792. But Brissot and Dumourier were resolved by one means. or other to break it. The former went so far as to propose that some French soldiers should be disguised as Austrian hussars, and make a nocturnal attack on the French villages; upon receipt of the intelligence, a motion was to have been made in the Assembly, and war, it was expected, would have been instantly decreed in the enthusiasm of the moment. His anxiety for its commencement was indescribable: de Graves, Clavière, and Roland hesitated, on account of the immense responsibility of such an undertaking; but Dumourier and he uniformly declared that nothing but a war could consolidate the freedom of France, disclose the enemies of the constitution, and unmask the perfidy of the Court. Their whole leisure time was employed in studying maps of the 1 Dumont, Low Countries, and meditating schemes of aggrandise- Souv. de ment with reference to that favourite object of French 410, 411. ambition.1 Mirabeau, recrimina lead to war. When such was the language of the leading men in the 106. French government and National Assembly, it is of little Mutual moment to detail the negotiations and mutual recrimina- tions, which tions which led to the commencement of hostilities by the French government. The French complained, and apparently with justice, that numerous bodies of emigrants were assembled, and organised into military bodies at Coblentz, and on other points on the frontier; that the Elector of Treves and the other lesser powers had evaded all demands for their dispersion; that Austrian troops were rapidly defiling towards the Brisgau and the Rhine, and that no satisfactory explanation of these movements had been given. The Imperialists retorted, with not less reason, that the French affiliated societies were striving to spread sedition through all the conterminous states; that Piedmont, Switzerland, and Belgium, were agitated by their exertions; that the Parisian orators and journals daily published invitations to all other people to revolt, and April 20. offered them the hand of fraternity if they did so ; that IX. 1792. CHAP. Avignon and the Venaissin had, without the shadow of legal right, been annexed to France; and the Catholics and nobles in Alsace deprived of their possessions, honours, and privileges, in violation of the treaty of Westphalia. The ultimatum of Austria was, that the monarchy should be re-established on the footing on which it was placed by the royal ordinance of 23d June 1789; that the property of the church in Alsace should be restored; the fiefs of that province, with the seignorial rights, given back to the German princes, and Avignon, with the Venaissin, to the Pope. These propositions were rejected; and Dumourier, who had now succeeded to the portfolio xiv. 30, 36, of foreign affairs, earnestly pressed the French King to Pièces Just. commence hostilities, in the hope of being able to overrun Mig. i. 167. Flanders before any considerable Austrian force could be brought up to its support.1 1 Hist. Parl. Jom. i. 205. No. 13. 107. desire for war in France. In urging the King to this step, Dumourier acted in Universal conformity with nearly the unanimous wish of the nation. All classes were equally anxious for war. The Royalists hoped everything from the invasion of the German powers the superiority of their discipline, the strength of their armies, made them anticipate an immediate march to Paris, and the final extinction of the Revolution, from which they had suffered so much. The Constitutionalists, worn out with the painful struggle they had so long maintained with their domestic enemies, expected to regain their ascendancy by the influence of the army, the augmented expenditure of government during war, and the experienced necessity of military discipline. The Democrats eagerly desired the excitement and tumult of campaigns, from all the chances of which they hoped to derive advantage. Victorious, they looked to the establishment of their principles in foreign states; vanquished, they anticipated the downfall of the Constitutionalists, Th. 47, 49, and their own installation in their stead.2 Such has been human nature in periods of excitement from the begin 2 Lac. i. 228. ning of the world." Facilior inter malos consensus ad bellum, quam in pace ad concordiam." * CHAP. 1792. 108. yields, own judg ment. Pressed alike by his friends, his ministers, and his enemies, Louis was at length compelled to take the fatal The King step. On the 20th April he repaired to the Assembly, against his and after a long exposition, by Dumourier, of the grounds of complaint against Austria-the secret tenor of the conferences of Mantua, Reichenbach, and Pilnitz; the coalition of kings formed to arrest the progress of the Revolution; the open protection given to the troops of the emigrants, and the intolerable conditions of the ultimatum-pronounced with a tremulous voice these irrevocable words "You have heard, gentlemen, the April 20. result of my negotiations with the court of Vienna; they are conformable to the sentiments more than once expressed to me by the National Assembly, and confirmed by the great majority of the kingdom. All prefer a war to the continuance of outrages on the national honour, or menaces to the national safety. I have exhausted all the means of pacification in my power: I now come, in terms of the constitution, to propose to the Assembly, that we should declare war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia." This declaration was received in silence, interrupted only by partial applause. How unanimous soever the members were in approving the declaration of the King, they were too deeply impressed with the solemnity and grandeur of the occasion, to give vent to any noisy ebullition of feeling. In the evening, at a meeting specially convened for the occasion, war was almost unanimously agreed to. A large propor-36. tion of the most enlightened men in the Assembly, in- Dumont, iv. cluding Condorcet, Clavière, Roland and de Graves, 168. Lac.ii. disapproved of this step, and yet voted for it-a striking 75, 76. proof of the manner in which, in troubled times, the more "Consent is easier among the bad for war, than in peace for concord."— TACITUS, Hist. i. 54. 1 Hist. Parl. 18. Mig. i. 228. Th. ii. CHAP. moderate and rational party are swept along by the daring measures of more vehement and reckless men. IX. 1792. 109. contrary to ing so. The King was well aware that the interests of his He acted family could not be benefited, but necessarily must be his convic injured, by the events of the war, whatever they might tion in do- be. Victorious, the people would be more imperious in their demands, and more difficult for the Crown to govern; vanquished, he would be accused of treachery, and made to bear the load of public indignation. So strongly was he impressed by these considerations, and so thoroughly convinced that his conduct, in agreeing to this war, might hereafter be made the subject of accusation at the trial which he was well aware was approaching, that he drew up a record of the proceedings of the council, where he delivered his opinions against it; and after getting the instrument signed by all the ministers, deposited it in the iron closet, which about this time he had secretly made in the wall of his apartments in the Tuileries, to contain the most important papers in his possession-both those upon which a charge might be founded against him, and those calculated to support his defence if afterwards brought to trial. The closet, with its contents, was subsequently revealed by the treachery of the blacksmith who was employed to make it. Thus commenced, against the will of the very monarch who declared it, the greatest, the most bloody, and the most interesting war which has agitated mankind since the fall of the Roman empire. Rising from small beginnings, it at length involved the world in its conflagration; involving the interests, and rousing the passions of every class of the people, it brought unprecedented armies into the field, and was carried on with a degree of exasperation hitherto unknown in civilised times.1 1 M. Cam pan, ii. 222. Th. ii. 73. The intelligence of the declaration of war was received with joy by all France, and by none more so than by those districts which were destined to suffer most from |