assailed the electorate of Mainz. The common people were
friendly, and he had no trouble in occupying the country as far
as the Rhine. The king of Sardinia having shown a hostile
temper, Montesquiou made an easy conquest of Savoy. At the
close of 1792 the relative position of France and her enemies
had been reversed. It was seen that the French were still able
to wage war, and that the revolutionary spirit had permeated
the adjoining countries, while the old governments of Europe,
jealous of one another and uncertain of the loyalty of their
subjects, were ill qualified for resistance.
Intoxicated with these victories, the Convention abandoned itself to the fervour of propaganda and conquest. The river Scheldt had been closed to commerce by various treaties to which England and Holland, neutral powers, were parties. Without a pretence of negotiation the French government declared on the 16th of November that the Scheldt was thenceforwards open. On the 19th a decree of the Convention offered the aid of France to all nations which were striving after freedom—in other words, to the malcontents in every neighbouring state. Not long afterwards the Convention annexed Savoy, with the consent, it should be added, of many Savoyards. On the 15th of December the Convention decreed that all peoples freed by its assistance should carry out a revolution like that which had been made in France on pain of being treated as enemies. Towards Great Britain the executive council and the Convention behaved with singular folly. There, in spite of a growing antipathy to the Revolution, Pitt earnestly desired to maintain peace. The conquest of the Netherlands and the symptoms of a wish to annex that country made his task most difficult. But the French The first coalition against France. government underrated the strength of Great Britain, imagining that all Englishmen who desired parliamentary reform desired revolution, and that a few democratic societies represented the nation. When Monge announced the intention of attacking Great Britain on behalf of the English republicans, the British government and nation were thoroughly alarmed and roused; and when the news of the execution of Louis XVI. was received, Chauvelin, the French envoy, was ordered to quit England. France declared war against England and Holland on the 1st of February and soon afterwards against Spain. In the course of the year 1793 the Empire, the kings of Portugal and Naples and the grand-duke of Tuscany declared war against France. Thus was formed the first coalition.
France was not prepared to encounter so many enemies. Administrative confusion had been heightened by the triumph of the Jacobins. Servan was succeeded as minister of war by Pache who was incapable and dishonest. The army of Dumouriez was left in such want that it dwindled rapidly. The commissioners of the Convention plundered the Netherlands with so little remorse that the people became bitterly hostile. The attempt to enforce a revolution of the French sort on the Catholic and conservative Belgians drove them to fury. By every unfair means the commissioners extorted the semblance of a popular vote in favour of incorporation, and France annexed the Netherlands. This was the last outrage. When a new Austrian army under the prince of Coburg entered the country, Dumouriez, who had invaded Holland, was unable to defend Belgium. On the 18th of March he was defeated at Neerwinden, and a few days later he was driven back to the frontier. Alike on public and personal grounds Dumouriez was the enemy of the government. Trusting in his influence over the army he resolved to lead it against the Convention, and, in order to secure his rear, he negotiated with the enemy. But he could make no impression on his soldiers, and deserted to the Austrians. Events followed a similar course in the Rhine valley. There also the French wore out the goodwill at first shown to them. They summoned a convention and obtained a vote for incorporation with France. But they were unable to hold their ground on the approach of a Prussian army. By April they had lost the country with the exception of Mainz, which was invested. France thus lay open to invasion from the east and the north. The Convention decreed a levy of 300,000 men.
About the same time began the first formidable uprising
against the Revolution, the War of La Vendée, the region lying
to the south of the lower Loire and facing the Atlantic.
Its inhabitants differed in many ways from the mass
of the nation. Living far from large towns and busy
Rising in
La Vendée.
routes of commerce, they remained primitive in all their
thoughts and ways. The peasants had always been on friendly
terms with the gentry, and the agrarian changes made by the
Revolution had not been appreciated so highly as elsewhere.
The people were ardent Catholics, who venerated the nonjuring
clergy and resented the measures taken against them. But
they remained passive until the enforcement of the decree for
the levy of 300,000 men. Caring little for the Convention and
knowing nothing of events on the northern or eastern frontier,
the peasants were determined not to serve and preferred to fight
the Republic at home. When once they had taken up arms
they found gentlemen to lead and priests to exhort, and their
rebellion became Royalist and Catholic. The chiefs were drawn
from widely different classes. If Bonchamps and La Rochejacquelin
were nobles, Stofflet was a gamekeeper and Cathelineau
a mason. As the country was favourable to guerilla warfare, and
the government could not spare regular troops from the frontiers,
the rebels were usually successful, and by the end of May had
almost expelled the Republicans from La Vendée.
Danger without and within prompted the Convention to strengthen the executive authority. That the executive and legislative powers ought to be absolutely separate had been an axiom throughout the Revolution. Ministers had always been excluded from a seat in the The Committee of Public Safety. legislature. But the Assemblies were suspicious of the executive and bent on absorbing the government. They had nominated committees of their own members to control every branch of public affairs. These committees, while reducing the ministers to impotence, were themselves clumsy and ineffectual. It may be said that since the first meeting of the states-general the executive authority had been paralysed in France. The Convention in theory maintained the separation of powers. Even Danton had been forced to resign office when he was elected a member. But unity of government was restored by the formation of a central committee. In January the first Committee of General Defence was formed of members of the committees for the several departments of state. Too large and too much divided for strenuous labour, it was reduced in April to nine members and re-named the Committee of Public Safety. It deliberated in secret and had authority over the ministers; it was entrusted with the whole of the national defence and empowered to use all the resources of the state, and it quickly became the supreme power in the republic. Under it the ministers were no more than head clerks. About the same time were instituted the deputies on mission in the provinces, who could overrule any local authority, and who corresponded regularly with the Committee. France thus returned under new forms to its traditional government: a despotic authority in Paris with all-powerful agents in the provinces. Against disaffection the government was armed with formidable weapons: the Committee of General Security and the Revolutionary Tribunal. The Committee of General Security, first established in October 1792, was several times remodelled. In September 1793 the Convention decreed that its members should be nominated by the Committee of Public Safety. The Committee of General Security had unlimited powers for the prevention or discovery of crime against the state. The Revolutionary Tribunal was decreed on the 10th of March. It was an extraordinary court, destined to try all offences against the Revolution without appeal. The jury, which received wages, voted openly, so that condemnation was almost certain. The director of the jury or public prosecutor was Fouquier Tinville. The first condemnation took place on the 11th of April.
Enmity between Girondin and Jacobin grew fiercer as the perils of the Republic increased. Danton strove to unite all partisans of the Revolution in defence of the country; but the Girondins, detesting his character and fearing his ambition,
