France and became a member of the convention. For a time the
propaganda was checked.

The feeling which it excited strengthened the government. Acting in
connexion with the Society of the Friends of the People, Grey gave
notice of a motion for a reform of parliament. Pitt said that it was
"not a time to make hazardous experiments"; and though Fox, Erskine, and
Sheridan spoke on the other side, he was supported by the larger number
of the party. Pitt was delighted at this split, and hoped to obtain a
pledge of co-operation against the propaganda from "the most respectable
members of opposition".[233] Matters were not ripe for this. An attempt
of Fox to procure the relief of the unitarians from penal laws was
defeated by a large majority, owing to the active part which they were
taking in spreading principles subversive, so Pitt said, "of every
established religion and every established government". Chauvelin and
Talleyrand found themselves avoided by society generally. They held
constant communication with Fox, Sheridan, Lord Lansdowne, and other
enemies of the government; and Chauvelin had the impertinence to send a
remonstrance to Grenville against the proclamation of May 21, for which
he was duly rebuked. All that they could obtain from Grenville was an
assurance that England desired to remain at peace with France, and hoped
that France would respect the rights of the king and his allies; if, in
other words, the French wished England to remain neutral, they must keep
their hands off Holland. No better success attended the effort to detach
Prussia from the Austrian alliance, and the Prussian king declared
himself at war with France.

An attempt of the French to snatch the Austrian Netherlands ended
miserably; their soldiers fled before the emperor's army of occupation
on April 29, mutinied, and murdered one of their generals. The allied
armies under the Duke of Brunswick were gathering, and Paris was in a
ferment. Neither of the two national assemblies, not the first, called
the constituent, nor its successor, the legislative assembly, could
govern. The Paris mob, bestial and sanguinary, was supreme, and was
moved from time to time to violent action by individuals or groups which
played upon and pandered to its passions. On June 20 a carefully
engineered insurrection exposed the king and queen to cruel insults and
imminent danger. The long agony of the monarchy was drawing to a close.
After protracted delays the allie