regard their official
acts, beseeching them to resist the demands they made in public and to
make war, and assuring them that France would be easily subdued and
cowed. They hoped, by this treason, to recover their undivided power.
All these letters were inspired, were almost dictated, by Fersen.

As Leopold began to see more clearly what it was his sister meant, he
modified his pacific policy. On the 25th of October he speaks of
increasing the royal authority by a counter-revolution in France. On
the 17th of November he invites Prussia to help him with 20,000 men.
On the 10th of December he denounces the annexation by France of the
German domains in Alsace. In conformity with this gradual change,
Kaunitz became more rigid, and he made known that any assault on the
Elector of Treves, for the protection he gave to the warlike
_emigres_, would be resisted by the imperial forces. Each step was as
short as possible. The transition from peace to war, from pointless
remonstrance to vigorous defiance, was slow and gradual. It began late
in October, when the real meaning of the acceptance of the
Constitution became known, but down to the month of January the change
was not decisive, and the tone was still ambiguous. On the 3rd of
January a letter from the queen at length carried the emperor over. On
the way this appeal had converted Mercy, and Mercy, on January 7,
wrote a letter which compelled Kaunitz to give way. Kaunitz had grown
grey in the idea of the French alliance and of rivalry with Prussia.
He laughed at Mr. Burke and the theory of contagion. He desired to
perpetuate a state of things which paralyzed France, by the rivalry
between the king and the democracy. To restore the king's power at
home was to increase it abroad. Kaunitz was willing that it should be
kept in check by the legislature; but a moment came when he perceived
that the progress of the opposition, of the Jacobins as men
indiscriminately called them, more properly of the Girondins, had
transferred the centre of gravity. What had been cast down in the
Monarch rose again in the Second Assembly, and the power of the
nation, the nation united with its representatives, began to appear.

Kaunitz, though he had no eye for such things, took alarm at last, and
resolved that the way to depress France was to assist the king of
France. On January 5, after the queen's letter of December 16 had been
received, he declared that Austria would support the elector of
Trev