All these armaments had scarcely begun when the victory of Neerwinden and the flight of Dumouriez brought the Austrians up to the Belgian frontier. Carnot was not discovered, the better men had not risen to command, the levy en masse had not been thought of. The French could do nothing in the field while the Prince of Coburg, supported by the Dutch, and by an Anglo-Hanoverian army under the Duke of York, sat down before the fortresses. By the end of July Condé and Valenciennes had fallen, and the road to Paris was open to the victors. They might have reached the capital in overwhelming force by the middle of August. But the English coveted, not Paris but Dunkirk, and the Duke of York withdrew with 37,000 men and laid siege to it. Coburg turned aside in the opposite direction, to besiege Le Quesnoy. He proposed to conquer the fortified towns, one after another, according to Grenville's prescription, and then to join hands with the Prussians whom it was urgent to have with him when penetrating to the interior. The Prussians meanwhile had taken Mentz, the garrison, like that of Valenciennes, making a defence too short for their fame. But the Prussians remembered the invasion of the year before, and they were in no hurry. The allies, with conflicting interests and divided counsels, gave the enemy time. Some years later, when Napoleon had defeated the Piedmontese, and was waiting for them to send back the treaty he had dictated at Cherasco, duly signed, he grew excessively impatient at their delay. The Piedmontese officers were surprised at what seemed a want of self-restraint, and let him see it. His answer was, "I may often lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute."
The French put to good account the time their enemies allowed them. Carnot took office on August 14, and on the 23rd he caused the Convention to decree what is pleasantly called the levy en masse but was the system of requisition, making every able-bodied man a soldier. The new spirit of administration was soon felt in the army. The forces besieging Le Quesnoy and Dunkirk were so far apart that the French came between and attacked them successively. The Dunkirk garrison opened the sluices and flooded the country, separating the English from the covering force of Hanoverians, and leaving the Duke of York no means of retreat except by a single causeway. On September 8 the French defeated the Hanoverians at Hondschooten and relieved Dunkirk. The English got away in great haste, abandoning their siege guns; but as they ought not to have got away at all, the French cut off the head of their victorious commander. Jourdan, his successor, turned upon the Prince of Coburg, and, by the new and expensive tactics, defeated him at Wattignies on October 16. Carnot, who did not yet trust his generals, arrived in time to win the day by overruling Jourdan and his staff. And every French child knows how he led the charge through the grapeshot, on foot, with his hat at the end of his sword. From that day to the peace of Bâle he held the army in his grasp. He had stopped the invasion. No one in the allied camp spoke any more of the shortest road to Paris; but they still held the places they had conquered. Two months later, Hoche, who had distinguished himself at Dunkirk, took the command in the Vosges, and stormed the lines of Weissenburg at the scene of the first action in the war of 1870. By the end of December the Prussians were shut up in Mayence, and Wurmser had retired beyond the Rhine. By that time, too, La Vendée, and Lyons, and Toulon had fallen. The campaign of 1794 was to be devoted to foreign war.
During that autumn and winter, Carnot, somewhat unmindful of what went on near him and heedless of the signatures he gave, was organising the enormous force the requisition provided, and laying the plans that were to give him so great a name in the history of his country. He divided the troops into thirteen armies. They call them fourteen, I believe, because there were cadres for an army of reserve. Two were required for the Spanish war, for the Pyrenees are impassable by artillery except at the two ends, where narrow valleys lead from France to Spain near San Sebastian, and by a strip of more open country near the Mediterranean. What passed there did not influence events; but it is well to know that the Spaniards under Ricardos gained important advantages in 1794, and fought better than they ever did in the field during their struggle with Napoleon. A third army was placed on the Italian frontier, a fourth on the Rhine, and a fifth against the allies in Flanders. Carnot increased the number because he had no men who had proved their fitness for the direction of very large forces. He meant that his armies should be everywhere sufficient, but in Belgium they were to be overwhelming. That was the point of danger, and there a great body of Austrians, Dutch, English, and Hanoverians had been collected. The Emperor himself appeared among them in May; and his brother, the Archduke Charles, was the best officer in the allied camp.
At the end of April Coburg took Landrecies, the fourth of the line of fortresses that had fallen. On May 18 the French were victorious at Tourcoing, where the English suffered severely, and the Duke of York sought safety in precipitate flight. There was even talk of a court martial. The day was lost in consequence of the absence of the Archduke, who suffered from fits like Julius Cæsar, and is said to have been lying unconscious many miles away. For a month longer the allies held their ground and repeatedly repressed Jourdan in his attempts to cross the Sambre. At last, Charleroi surrendered to the French, and on the following day, June 26, they won the great battle of Fleurus. Mons fell on July 1, and on the 5th the allies resolved to evacuate Belgium. The four fortresses were recovered in August; and Coburg retired by Liége into Germany, York by Antwerp into Holland. In October Jourdan pursued the Austrians, and drove them across the Rhine. The battle of Fleurus established the ascendancy of the French in Europe as the 1st of June had created that of England on the ocean. They began the offensive, and retained it for twenty years. Yet the defeat of Fleurus, after such varying fortunes and so much alternate success does not explain the sudden discouragement and collapse of the allies. One of the great powers was about to abandon the alliance. Prussia had agreed in the spring to accept an English subsidy. For, £300,000 down, and £150,000 a month, a force of fifty to sixty thousand Prussians was to be employed in a manner to be agreed upon with England,—that meant in Belgium. Before Malmesbury's signature was dry the whole situation altered.
The Committee of Public Safety had created a diversion in the rear of the foe. Kozsiusko, with the help of French money and advice, had raised an insurrection in Poland, and the hands of the Prussians were tied. The Polish question touched them nearer than the French, and all their thoughts were turned in the opposite direction. The Austrians began to apprehend that Prussia would desert them on the Rhine, and would gain an advantage over them in Poland, while they were busy with their best army in Flanders. Pitt increased his offers. Lord Spencer was sent to Vienna to arrange for a further subsidy. But the Prussians began to withdraw. Marshal Moellendorf informed the French in September that the Austrians were about to attack Treves. He promised that he would do no more than he could help for his allies. On the 20th, Hohenlohe, who was not in the secret, having fought Hoche at Kaiserslautern and defeated him, the commander-in-chief sent explanations and apologies. In October, Pitt stopped the supplies, and the Prussians disappeared from the war.
The winter of 1794-95 was severe, and even the sea froze in Holland. In January, Pichegru marched over the solid Rhine, and neither Dutch nor English offered any considerable resistance. The Prince of Orange fled to England; the Duke of York retreated to Bremen, and there embarked; and on the 28th the French were welcomed by the democracy of Amsterdam. A body of cavalry rode up to the fleet on the ice, and received its surrender. There was no cause left for it to defend. Holland was to be the salvation of French credit. It gave France trade, a fleet, a position from which to enter Germany on the undefended side. The tables were turned against Pitt and his policy. His Prussian ally made peace in April, giving up to France all Germany as far as the Rhine, and undertaking to occupy Hanover, if George III., as elector, refused to be neutral. Spain almost immediately followed. Manuel Godoy, lately a guardsman, but Prime Minister and Duke of Alcudia since November 1792, had declined Pitt's proposals for an alliance as long as there were hopes of saving the life of Lewis by the promise of neutrality. When those hopes came to an end, he consented. The joint occupation of Toulon had not been amicable; and when George III. was made King of Corsica, it was an injury to Spain as a Mediterranean Power. The animosity against regicide France faded away; the war was not popular, and the Duke of Alcudia became, amid general rejoicing, Prince of the Peace.
We saw how the first invasion in 1792, brought the worst men to power. In 1793, the Reign of Terror coincided exactly with the season of public danger. Robespierre became the head of the government on the very day when the bad news came from the fortresses, and he fell immediately after the occupation of Brussels, July 11, 1794, exposed the effects of Fleurus. We cannot dissociate these events, or disprove the contention that the Reign of Terror was the salvation of France. It is certain that the conscription of March 1793, under Girondin auspices, scarcely yielded half the required amount, whilst the levies of the following August, decreed and carried out by the Mountain, inundated the country with soldiers, who were prepared by the slaughter going on at home to face the slaughter at the front. This, then, was the result which Conservative Europe obtained by its attack on the Republic. The French had subjugated Savoy, the Rhineland, Belgium, Holland, whilst Prussia and Spain had been made to sue for peace. England had deprived France of her colonies, but had lost repute as a military Power. Austria alone, with her dependent neighbours, maintained the unequal struggle on the Continent under worse conditions, and with no hope but in the help of Russia.