"I want war on the 10th of February," says Brissot, "unless we have received his renunciation."
No explanations; it is satisfaction we want; "to require satisfaction is to put the Emperor at our mercy."[2360] The Assembly, so eager to start the quarrel, usurps the King's right to take the first step and formally declares war, fixing the date.[2361]—The die is now cast.
"They want war," says the Emperor, "and they shall have it."
Austria immediately forms an alliance with Prussia, threatened, like herself, with revolutionary propaganda.[2362] By sounding the alarm belles the Jacobins, masters of the Assembly, have succeeded in bringing about that "monstrous alliance," and, from day to day, this alarm sounds the louder. One year more, thanks to this policy, and France will have all Europe for an enemy and as its only friend, the Regency of Algiers, whose internal system of government is about the same as her own.
IV.—Secret motives of the leaders.
Their control compromised by peace.—Discontent of the rich
and cultivated class.—Formation and increase of the party
of order.—The King and this party reconciled.
Behind their carmagnoles[2363] we can detect a design which they will avow later on.
"We were always obstructed by the Constitution," Brissot is to say, "and nothing but war could destroy the Constitution."[2364]
Diplomatic wrongs, consequently, of which they make parade, are simply pretexts; if they urge war it is for the purpose of overthrowing the legal order of things which annoys them; their real object is the conquests of power, a second internal revolution, the application of their system and a final state of equality.—Concealed behind them is the most politic and absolute of theorists, a man "whose great art is the attainment of his ends without showing himself, the preparation of others for far-sighted views of which they have no suspicion, and that of speaking but little in public and acting in secret."[2365] This man is Sieyès, "the leader of everything without seeming to lead anything."[2366] As infatuated as Rousseau with his own speculations, but as unscrupulous and as clear-sighted as Macchiavelli in the selection of practical means, he was, is, and will be, in decisive moments, the consulting counsel of radical democracy.