securities lying in its banks, but held by the nationals of a foreign State.
On the revolutionary side also there was a definite point at issue, which was the permission accorded within the empire for the emigrants to meet in arms and to threaten the French frontier.
But these precise and legal points were not the true causes of the war. The true causes of the war were the desire of the unreformed European Governments (notably those of Prussia and Austria) that the Revolution should, in their own interests, be checked, and the conviction that their armed forces were easily capable of effecting the destruction of the new French régime.
The Court of Vienna refused to accept a just indemnity that was offered the princes of the empire in Alsace for the loss of their old feudal rights; Leopold, the emperor, who was one of the same generation as the French King and Queen, died upon the 1st of March, 1792, and was succeeded by a son only twenty-four years of age and easily persuaded to war.
On the French side, with the exception of the Mountain and notably of Robespierre, there was a curious coalition of opinion demanding war.
The Court and the reactionaries were sufficiently certain of the victory of the Allies to find their salvation in war.
The revolutionary party, that is, the mass of public opinion and the “patriots,” as they called themselves, the Girondins, also, and especially, desired war as a sort of crusade for
