On the German frontier political disunion was fatal to the success of the allies. Frederick William believed that the emperor's refusal to accept the partition treaty encouraged the Poles to resist his demands. He left the army of the Rhine, and went off to Posen to establish his rule in his new dominions, ordering Brunswick not to engage in any operations which might prevent him from sending him such troops as he might call for. Wurmser, the Austrian commander, drove the French from their lines at Weissenburg on October 13, but the limited co-operation of the Prussian army was not enough to secure any material progress, and finally, on December 26, Hoche inflicted a severe defeat on the Austrians at the Geisberg. Wurmser retreated across the Rhine, and the Prussians were forced to abandon the greater part of the Palatinate, and withdrew to Mainz. No French territory on the north or east remained in the hands of the allies except Condé, Valenciennes and Le Quesnoy, while on the Italian frontier forward movements of the Piedmontese had ended in failure and the King of Sardinia was reduced to a merely defensive attitude.
The republican armies were not less successful against domestic foes than against foreign invasion. The loss of Mainz in July set free a large force which was used to lay waste La Vendée. The Vendeans applied for help to the emigrant princes and to England. Pitt, though he would not encourage the hopes of the princes, was willing to support a movement which was weakening the enemy and might forward the establishment of a constitutional monarchy. Stores were sent to Noirmoutier for the insurgents and further help was promised. Some 80,000 Vendeans, of both sexes and all ages, crossed the Loire, marched through Anjou, and made an attempt on Granville, in the hope of gaining a port at which they might receive succour from England. An expedition was prepared to help them, and a force of 12,000 men, émigrés, British troops, and others under the Earl of Moira, the Lord Rawdon of the American war, arrived off the Norman coast on December 2. They made signals but no answer was returned. The Vendeans had failed before Granville and had retreated a few days before. As they were attempting to return to their homes they were caught by a republican force; a large number was massacred and the rest dispersed. The English expedition returned without accomplishing anything.
EVACUATION OF TOULON.
Toulon was threatened by the republicans both on the east and west, while on the north Lyons was closely besieged. Hood despatched Nelson to Naples for reinforcements which were sent by the king. Even with them the garrison, made up of 2,000 British troops, Spaniards, Sardinians, Neapolitans, and French royalists, many of them untrained, amounted to only about 12,000 men fit for duty, a wholly insufficient number, for the defences were widely extended. Hood sent off four of the French ships, full of republican prisoners, who were allowed to return to their homes because it was inconvenient to keep them. By the middle of September the republicans were pressing the siege, and on October 1 the garrison under Lord Mulgrave smartly drove them from a commanding position which they had seized on Mont Faron. The fall of Lyons on the 9th set free a large force to act against the place, and the besieging army under Dugommier finally numbered 37,000 men, with artillery organised and directed by a young Corsican officer, Napoleon Bonaparte, who since September 16 had taken an active part in the siege. General O'Hara, then in command in the town, was wounded and taken prisoner while leading a sortie, and on the night of December 16-17 the enemy forced the line of defence and planted their batteries in commanding positions. Neither the harbour nor the town was tenable any longer, and orders were given for the embarkation of the troops. Of the twenty-seven French ships of the line in the harbour, nine, together with smaller vessels, were burnt by British seamen under Sir Sidney Smith, in spite of a furious bombardment from the heights, and three accompanied the retreat. The remaining fifteen were left to the enemy, and an attempt to destroy the dockyard was only partially successful, for time was short and the Spaniards, either through treachery or more probably through the incompetence of their officers, failed to accomplish their share of the work. The English and Spanish fleets sailed on the 19th, carrying off some 6,000 refugees, and Hood's fleet anchored in Hyères bay. The remainder of the population was exposed to the cruel vengeance of the jacobins.
There is good reason to believe that the government did not intend to violate the terms of the surrender by keeping Toulon as a British possession. As an isolated station it could not have been defended and supplied without an enormous strain on England's resources. Its value to Great Britain was purely temporary; it was of incalculable importance to the enemy, and it was expected to serve as a base for the movement in the south against the jacobin government. The issue of the insurrection was decided by the fall of Lyons. Hopes of a success to be gained through French disaffection were as ill-founded as those based on American loyalism. The ministers pursued a mistaken policy, and pursued it weakly; for as they believed that the occupation of Toulon was of first-rate importance, they should have concentrated their efforts upon its defence instead of squandering their resources by trying to do two things at once, to co-operate with the Vendeans and to defend Toulon, while the war on the Flemish frontier was a constant drain on England's small army. Grenville ascribed the disaster to the "common cause" to the failure of the Austrian government to fulfil its promise of sending a reinforcement of 5,000 men to the garrison.[247] The loss of the place was a bitter disappointment; it was mortifying in itself, and it declared the futility of the high hopes built on the insurrectionary movement in the south. Reckoning it with Dunkirk and the Vendean expedition, the government had to confess to three failures in the year. Yet England had some grounds for satisfaction. Tobago and the fishery islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were taken without difficulty, Pondicherry and the other French factories in India were surrendered, several French ships of war were captured in single-ship and other small combats, and a substantial advantage was gained by the destruction of the ships at Toulon.
REPRESSION.
The success of the allies in the spring of 1793 gave Fox an opportunity for moving for the re-establishment of peace. If, he argued, the war was undertaken to preserve Holland and check the aggrandisement of France, that object was attained. France had been the aggressor; so much the more reason was there to regard the war as purely defensive, and end it when the aggression ended. Pitt said that he would no longer pledge himself that England would not interfere in the internal affairs of France. So long as the existing French government was in power, there could be no security that the system of aggression and propagandism would cease, or that treaties would be observed. Fox's motion was defeated by 187 to 47. Earlier in the session the government brought in a bill against traitorous correspondence, to prevent intercourse with France, and specially such acts as the purchase of French stocks, which tended to support the enemy. Some of its provisions were unusually restrictive, and the penalty of treason was attached to the breach of any of them. The bill was passed without material alteration. In spite of the strong feeling against societies believed to advocate revolutionary principles, Grey, in accordance with his notice of the last session, moved that the petition of the Friends of the People for parliamentary reform should be considered. His motion, which was supported by Fox, was defeated by 282 to 41.
Violent efforts were made by the government to crush the effects of the French propaganda, by prosecutions for uttering, printing, or publishing sedition. The attack was indiscriminate; spies were employed, and idle words of obscure persons were made grounds of indictment. Both in the superior courts and at quarter sessions severe penalties were inflicted. One Frost, a broken-down attorney, and a pestilent rascal enough, though convicted merely of saying in a coffee-house that he was "for equality and no king," was sentenced to six months' imprisonment, to stand in the pillory, and be struck off the roll. A dissenting preacher, found guilty of using seditious language in the pulpit, was sentenced to fines of £200 and four years' imprisonment; and Ridgway, a bookseller in Piccadilly, was awarded the same penalty for selling the Rights of Man and two other pamphlets of a kindred tendency. In Scotland, where the government business was managed by Dundas, the parliamentary representation was extremely unsatisfactory; the reformers were violent, and belonged to revolutionary societies. The sedition cases were mostly heard before the lord-justice clerk Braxfield, who behaved with scandalous harshness and severity. One Muir, who had been expelled from the society of advocates, though no offence of any magnitude was proved against him at his trial, was condemned to fourteen years' transportation. Three others received like sentences, and a dissenting preacher named Palmer was transported for five years. Adam, an eminent Scottish lawyer, contended in parliament that the sentences on Muir and Palmer were illegal. His opinion was traversed by Dundas and Pitt, and his motion on their behalf was negatived by 171 to 32.
It must be remembered that the proceedings of the corresponding and constitutional societies were such as no settled government could leave unpunished. Some few arms and a mass of compromising documents were seized in Edinburgh, and twelve of the leading members of these societies were arrested in May, 1794. A secret committee of the commons presented reports on seditious practices, which show that some persons had conspired to raise an armed insurrection, and that a so-called national convention at Edinburgh was concerned in treasonable conspiracy. Later in the year one Watt was hanged for engaging in a wild plot to seize Edinburgh castle and commit other acts of treason. On the presentation of the first report of the committee the government brought in a bill to suspend the habeas corpus act. Pitt declared the matter urgent, and the bill, which was introduced in the commons on Friday the 16th, was passed in a special sitting the next day, though not without a struggle, Fox accusing the ministers of a design to terrorise the people in order to shield themselves from the condemnation which they deserved for wickedly involving the country in a disastrous war. The opposition in the commons did not rise in any division above 39, and the lords passed the bill by 92 to 7. The ordinary law had hitherto proved sufficient for the occasion, and a review of the evidence before parliament does not appear to show adequate cause for arming the executive with an authority so dangerous to liberty. Parliament was alarmed, and the government shared its alarm and yielded to its desires. A revulsion of feeling ensued. When the prisoners arrested in May were tried for treason, the evidence was found to be weak. The first, Hardy, a shoemaker, was brilliantly defended by Erskine, and was acquitted. Horne Tooke, the only one of the lot in a superior social position, jeered at the court, and called Pitt, the Duke of Richmond, and other great persons to give evidence as to their former connexion with societies for parliamentary reform. He and Thelwall, a lecturer, were acquitted, and the rest were set at liberty. The general alarm was pacified, and people rejoiced that the high character of the English courts of justice should have been vindicated.
ACTIVITY OF THE OPPOSITION.