acting on instructions from
home, York went off with a force of 37,000 men, his own English and
German troops with 11,000 Austrians, to lay siege to Dunkirk. About the
same time Frederick William ordered 8,000 Prussian troops engaged in
Flanders to withdraw to Luxemburg, and Coburg invested Le Quesnoy.

On one side only was full advantage taken of the distress of France. In
consequence of the late disputes with Spain and Russia the British navy
was in an efficient state. Of 113 ships of the line nearly ninety were
in good condition. Howe commanded the channel fleet; he kept it at
Spithead, and it did nothing of importance during the year. The
Mediterranean fleet under Hood sailed in June and blockaded Toulon. The
insurrectionary movement at Marseilles was quelled by the convention,
and the royalists at Toulon were threatened by the jacobin forces.
Though the town was well supplied with provisions, the chiefs of the
royalist party persuaded the people that the only way to escape
starvation was to treat with the English. The inhabitants declared for
Louis XVII., the son of the late king, and the constitution of 1791, and
surrendered the town to Hood, together with the ships in the port,
thirty ships of the line, more than a third of the whole French line of
battle, and other smaller vessels. Hood received the forts and the ships
for King Louis and promised to restore them at the end of the war. He
invited the co-operation of the Spanish fleet under Langara and when it
appeared entered the harbour, on August 29. The news was received in
England with delight, and Grenville declared his belief that "the
business at Toulon" would probably be "decisive of the war". England
desired the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, and it was hoped
that the occupation of the place would strengthen the movement in that
direction in the south. The _emigre_ Count of Provence, the next younger
brother of Louis XVI., who had assumed the title of regent, desired the
government to allow him to enter the town. As the _emigres_ aimed at the
restoration of absolutism it would have been fatal to the hopes built on
the movement in the south in favour of a constitutional monarchy to have
granted his request, and it would have been unfair to the Toulonese who
stipulated for the acceptance of the constitution of 1791. Besides this,
the _emigres_ were strongly opposed to the policy of conquest adopted at
Antwerp; and, though Toulon was not to be t