ssador at the French capital Pitt
adhered doggedly, tenaciously, to a peace policy; persisted in preserving
the neutrality of Holland; was ready, were it only possible, only
permitted to him, to recognize the new Republic. But even if the
execution of Louis the Sixteenth had not roused irresistible indignation
in England the action of the new Republic made the prolongation of peace
an impossibility. When, in the winter of 1792, the Convention made the
famous offer of its aid in arms to all peoples eager to be free, it must
have been plain to Pitt that, with France in that temper and England
tempest-tossed between hatred of the Revolution and fear lest its
theories were being insidiously fostered in her own confines, the
preservation of peace was a dream. The dream was finally dissipated when
France made ready to attack Holland and, rejecting all possible
negotiations, declared war in the early days of 1793.

[Sidenote: 1793--France declares war against Holland]

At first the war went ill with France, and if the German Powers had
co-operated earnestly and honestly with England it is at least within the
limits of possibility that Paris might have been occupied and the
Revolution for the time retarded. France seemed to be circled by foes;
her enemies abroad were aided by civil war at home. La Vendee was in
Royalist revolt; Marseilles and Lyons rose against the tyranny of Paris;
Toulon, turning against the Republic, welcomed an English fleet. For a
moment the arms of England and the aims of the Allies seemed to have
triumphed. But the passionate determination of the French popular
leaders and the mass of the French people to save the Revolution seemed
to inspire them with a heroism that grew in proportion to the threatened
danger. Her armies were swollen with enthusiastic recruits. Her
internal revolts were coped with and crushed with savage severity. Loyal
La Vendee was beaten. The rebellious towns of Lyons and Marseilles
almost ceased to exist under the merciless repression of their
conquerors. Many of the allied armies were defeated, while those of the
two German Powers for their own selfish ends played the game of
revolutionary France by abstaining from any serious effort to {304}
advance into the country. Germany and Austria were confident that they
could whenever they pleased crush revolutionary France, and they
preferred to postpone the process, in order to occupy themselves in a new
partition of Poland