little centripetal force. In 1795 Prussia, Spain, and
Tuscany withdrew for reasons already indicated in another connection,
and made their peace on terms as advantageous as they could secure.
Holland was conquered by France in the winter of 1794-95, and to this
day the illustrated school-books recall to every child of the French
Republic the half-fabulous tale of how a Dutch fleet was captured by
French hussars. The severity of the cold was long remembered as
phenomenal, and the frozen harbors rendered naval resistance
impossible, while cavalry manoeuvered with safety on the thick ice.
The Batavian Republic, as the Dutch commonwealth was now called, was
really an appanage of France.

But England and Austria, though deserted by their strongest allies,
were still redoubtable enemies. The policy of the former had been to
command the seas and destroy the commerce of France on the one hand,
on the other to foment disturbance in the country itself by
subsidizing the royalists. In both plans she had been successful: her
fleets were ubiquitous, the Chouan and Vendean uprisings were
perennial, and the emigrant aristocrats menaced every frontier.
Austria, on the other hand, had once been soundly thrashed. Since
Frederick the Great had wrested Silesia from her, and thereby set
Protestant Prussia among the great powers, she had felt that the
balance of power was disturbed, and had sought everywhere for some
territorial acquisition to restore her importance. The present
emperor, Francis II, and his adroit minister, Thugut, were equally
stubborn in their determination to draw something worth while from the
seething caldron before the fires of war were extinguished. They
thought of Bavaria, of Poland, of Turkey, and of Italy; in the last
country especially it seemed as if the term of life had been reached
for Venice, and that at her impending demise her fair domains on the
mainland would amply replace Silesia. Russia saw her own advantage in
the weakening either of Turkey or of the central European powers, and
became the silent ally of Austria in this policy.

The great armies of the French republic had been created by Carnot,
with the aid of his able lieutenant, Dubois de Crance; they were
organized and directed by the unassisted genius of the former. Being
the first national armies which Europe had known, they were animated
as no others had been by that form of patriotism which rests not
merely on animal instinct, but on a princi