[438] There is a very picturesque account of the storming of the Bastille in Carlyle’s French Revolution, book v, chap. vi.
[439] Carlyle is at his best on this flight, French Revolution, book iv, chaps. iv and v.
[440] Wiriath.
[441] The Declaration of Pillnitz was a diplomatic démarche that failed. Great Britain had definitely refused to intervene in favour of the French monarchy, and Austrian statesmanship proposed to save the collective face of European monarchy by a sounding announcement of sympathy with the French Bourbons, followed by a proviso that unanimity should be secured before intervention was attempted. French opinion (and most historians) concentrated on the announcement and overlooked the proviso.—P.G.
[442] The sour grapes of Champagne spread dysentery in the Prussian army.—P.G.
[443] The intelligence of the French army of the Revolution was largely due to a period of intelligent military thinking and writing which set in among French soldiers after the defeats of the army of Louis XV in the Seven Years War. Napoleon himself was full of traces of this inspiration.—P. G.
[444] I cannot agree that England was ever, at any moment, “a prospective ally” of France. There was a deep divergence of interests; and it is impossible to think of Pitt and the Whig nobles being in any way the allies of the France of 1793.—E. B.
[445] In his article, “French Revolutionary Wars,” in the Encyclopædia Britannica.
[446] In the thirteen months before June, 1794, there were 1220 executions; in the following seven weeks there were 1376.—P. G.
[447] Channing, vol. iii. chap. xviii.