surance of continued
peace. He did not yet recognise the peril that lay in the new French
Constitution. Under that Constitution, no government could be deemed
legitimate unless it aimed at liberty, and derived its powers from the
national will. All else is usurpation; and against usurped authority,
insurrection is a duty. The Rights of Man were meant for general
application, and were no more specifically French than the
multiplication table. They were not founded on national character and
history, but on Reason, which is the same for all men. The Revolution
was essentially universal and aggressive; and although these
consequences of its original principle were assiduously repressed by
the First Assembly, they were proclaimed by the Second, and roused the
threatened Powers to intervene. Apart from this inflaming cause the
motives of the international conflict were indecisive. The emperor
urged the affair of Avignon, the injury to German potentates who had
possessions in Alsace, the complicity of France in the Belgian
troubles, and the need of European concert while the French denied the
foundations of European polity.

Dumouriez offered to withdraw the French troops from the frontier, if
Austria would send no more reinforcements, but at that moment the
queen sent word of an intended attack on Liege. The offer seemed
perfidious, and envenomed the quarrel. Marie Antoinette despatched
Goguelat, the man who was not at his post on the flight to Varennes,
to implore intervention. She also gave Mercy her notions as to an
Austrian manifesto; and in this letter, dated April 30, there is no
sign of alarm, and no suggestion yet that France might be cowed by the
use of exorbitant menaces. Dumouriez, who desired war with Austria,
endeavoured to detach Prussia from the alliance. He invited the king
to arbitrate in the Alsatian dispute, and promised deference to his
award. He proposed that the prerogative should be enlarged, the
princes indemnified, the _emigres_ permitted to return. Frederic
William was unmoved by these advances. He relied on the annexation of
Alsace and Lorraine to compensate both allies, and he expected to
succeed, because his army was the most illustrious of all armies in
Europe. He wished to restore the _emigres_, who would support him
against Austria, and the _emigres_ looked to him to set up the order
of society that had fallen. "Better to lose a province," they said,
"than to live under a constitution."

The