Meantime the army of the Eastern Pyrenees had invaded Biscay, Vittoria, and Bilbao. Already master of that part of the frontier to which access was most difficult, the French, whom their last victories had brought to the neighborhood, of Pampeluna, were in a position to capture the capital of Navarre, and open an easy road to the two kingdoms of Castile and that of Aragon. Whereupon the king of Spain made proposals of peace.
This was the second crowned head which had recognized the existence of the French Republic; and in recognizing it, the king tacitly condoned what he no doubt regarded as the murder of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette.
The peace was signed. Before the necessities of war, family ties ceased to be considered. France abandoned her conquests beyond the Pyrenees, and Spain ceded to France her possessions on the island of Saint-Domingo. But, as we have just said, it is not from the standpoint of material accessions that the question of peace with Spain must be considered. No! the question was a moral one.
This the reader will already have understood. This defection of Charles IV. from the royal cause was an immense step, and one that was far more important than that taken by Frederick William. Frederick William was not bound in any way to the Bourbons of France, while, in signing the peace with the Republic, the Spanish king ratified all the decrees of the Convention.
Meantime the Army of the North, which was engaged with the Austrians, took Ypres and Charleroi, won the battle of Fleurus, recaptured Landrecies, occupied Namur and Treves, reconquered Valenciennes, and took Crève-Cœur, Ulrich, Gorcomm, Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Rotterdam, and The Hague. At last an unheard-of thing happened—something which had never been seen before, and which until then had been absent from the picturesque annals of French warfare; the Dutch men-of-war, frozen in the ice, were captured by a regiment of hussars. This strange feat of arms, which seemed to be a caprice of Providence in behalf of the French, led to the capitulation of Zealand.
[CHAPTER II]
A GLIMPSE OF PARIS—THE INCROYABLES
All these great victories naturally had their echo in Paris—Paris, that short-sighted city which has ever had a limited horizon, save when some great national excitement has driven her beyond her material interests. Paris, weary of bloodshed, eagerly sought after pleasure, and was only too glad to turn her eyes toward the theatre of war, so glorious was the drama which was there being enacted.