VIEW IN THE OLD TOWN, WARSAW.

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Thus it happened that the King of Prussia, with hands full of aggression, did not appear on the Rhine to chastise the aggressions of France, before the month of April. He brought with him about fifty thousand men, Prussians, Saxons, Hessians, and Bavarians. He was joined by fifteen or twenty thousand Austrians, under Wurmser, and five or six thousand French Emigrants under the Prince of Condé. But the French had on the Rhine one hundred and forty thousand men at least, of whom twenty thousand were within the walls of Mayence. The Prussians laid siege to that city, and the Austrians and British to Valenciennes. On the 21st of July the French engaged to give up Mayence on condition that they should be allowed to march out with the honours of war, and this the King of Prussia was weak enough to comply with. They must, of necessity, have soon surrendered at discretion; now they were at liberty to join the rest of the army and again resist the Allies. Valenciennes did not surrender until the 28th of July, and not till after a severe bombardment by the Duke of York. Thus three months of the summer had been wasted before these two towns, during which time the French had been employed in drawing forces from all quarters to the frontiers of Belgium, under the guidance of Carnot. The Duke of York was recalled from Valenciennes to Menin, to rescue the hereditary Prince of Orange from an overwhelming French force, against which his half-Jacobinised troops showed no disposition to act. Having effected his deliverance, the Duke of York marched on Dunkirk, and began, towards the end of August, to invest it; but he was left unsupported by the Prince of Orange, and being equally neglected by the Austrians, he was compelled to raise the siege on the 7th of September, and retreated with the loss of his artillery. The Prince of Orange was himself not long unassailed. Houchard drove him from Menin, and took Quesnoy from him, but was, in his turn, routed by the Austrian general Beaulieu, and chased to the very walls of Lille. According to the recent decree of the Convention, that any general surrendering a town or post should be put to death, Houchard was recalled to be guillotined. There continued a desultory sort of warfare on the Belgian frontiers for the remainder of the campaign. On the 15th and 16th of October Jourdain drove the Duke of Coburg from the neighbourhood of Maubeuge across the Sambre, but the Duke of York coming up with fresh British forces, which had arrived at Ostend under Sir Charles Grey, the French were repulsed, and the Netherland frontiers maintained by the Allies for the rest of the year.

RETREAT OF THE ROYALISTS FROM TOULON. (See p. [423].)

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On the Rhine, the war was carried on quite into the winter. The King of Prussia did not stay longer than to witness the surrender of Mayence; he then hurried away to look after his new Polish territory, and left the army under the command of the Duke of Brunswick. Brunswick, in concert with Wurmser and his Austrians, attacked and drove the French from their lines at Weissenburg, took from them Lauter, and laid siege to Landau. Wurmser then advanced into Alsace, which the Germans claimed as their old rightful territory, and invested Strasburg. But the Convention Commissioners, St. Just and Lebas, defended the place vigorously. They called forces from all quarters; they terrified the people into obedience by the guillotine, Lebas saying that with a little guillotine and plenty of terror he could do anything. But he did not neglect to send for the gallant young Hoche, and put him at the head of the army. Wurmser was compelled to fall back; Hoche marched through the defiles of the Vosges, and, taking Wurmser by surprise, defeated him, made many prisoners, and captured a great part of Wurmser's cannon. In conjunction with Pichegru, Dessaix, and Michaud, he made a desperate attack, on the 26th of December, on the Austrians in the fortified lines of Weissenburg, whence they had so lately driven the French; but the Duke of Brunswick came to their aid, and enabled the Austrians to retire in order. Hoche again took possession of Weissenburg; the Austrians retreated across the Rhine, and the Duke of Brunswick and his Prussians fell back on Mayence. Once there, dissatisfied with the Prussian officers, he resigned his command, he and Wurmser parting with much mutual recrimination. Wurmser was not able long to retain Mayence; and the French not only regained all their old positions, before they retired to winter quarters, but Hoche crossed the lines and wintered in the Palatinate, the scene of so many French devastations in past wars. The French also repulsed the enemy on the Spanish and Sardinian frontiers.

Though war had long been foreseen with France, when it took place we had no fleet in a proper condition to put to sea. It was not till the 14th of July that Lord Howe, who had taken the command of the Channel fleet, sailed from Spithead with fifteen ships of the line, three of which were first-rates, but none of them of that speed and equipment which they ought to have been. He soon obtained intelligence of a French fleet of seventeen sail of the line, seen westward of Belleisle. He sent into Plymouth, and had two third-rate vessels added to his squadron. On the 31st of July he caught sight of the French fleet, but never came up with them, the French ships being better sailers. After beating about in vain, he returned to port, anchoring in Torbay on the 4th of September. At the end of October Howe put to sea again with twenty-four sail of the line and several frigates, and several times came near the French fleet, but could never get to engage. He, however, protected our merchant vessels and disciplined his sailors. One French ship was taken off Barfleur by Captain Saumarez of the Crescent, and that was all.

In the West Indies a small squadron and some land troops took the islands of Tobago, St. Pierre, and Miquelon. At the invitation of the planters, we also took possession of the western or French portion of St. Domingo; but in Martinique, where we had had the same invitation, the Royalist French did not support our efforts according to promise, and the enterprise failed from the smallness of the force employed. Besides these transactions, there occurred a severe fight between Captain Courteney, of the frigate Boston, with only thirty-two guns and two hundred men, and the Ambuscade, a French frigate of thirty-six guns and four hundred picked men, in which both received much damage, and in which Captain Courteney was killed, but in which the Frenchman was compelled to haul off. In the East Indies we again seized Pondicherry, and all the small factories of the French.