a fight to the
knife; while France in her armies more nobly maintained her greater
struggle on the frontier. There for a while after Valmy all had
prospered. Brunswick had fallen back to Coblenz. A French army under
the Marquis de Custine had overrun all the Rhineland as far as Mainz.
Dumouriez, transferred from the Ardennes to the Belgian frontier, had
invaded the Austrian Netherlands. On the 6th of November he won a
considerable victory at Jemmappes, and towards the end of December, he
controlled most of the province.

The Convention, elated at these successes, issued decrees proclaiming a
crusade against the European tyrannies, and announcing the propaganda
of the principles of liberty. But in practice the French invasion did
not {171} generally produce very edifying results. Generals and troops
plundered unmercifully, to make up for the disorganization of their own
service and lack of pay, and even the French Government imposed the
expenses of the war on the countries that had to support its horrors.

The close of the year 1792 marked a period of success. The opening of
1793, however, saw the pendulum swing back. New enemies gathered about
France. Sardinia, whose province of Savoy had been invaded, now had a
considerable army in the field. At short intervals after the execution
of Louis, England, Holland, Spain, joined the coalition. And the
Convention light-heartedly accepted this accumulation of war. To face
the storm it appointed in January a committee of general defence of
twenty-five members; but Danton alone would have done better than the
twenty-five. While the trial of the King proceeded he was casting
about for support in the assembly for a constructive policy. He
stretched a hand to the Girondins; they refused it; and Danton turned
back to the Mountain once more, compelled to choose between two
factions the one that was for the moment willing to act with him.

{172} Through February and into March the military situation kept
getting worse, and the Mountain made repeated attacks on the Gironde.
On the 5th of March news reached Paris that the Austrians had captured
Aix-la-Chapelle, and that the French general Miranda had been compelled
to abandon his guns and to retire from before Maestricht, which he was
besieging. Danton, who was in the north, arranging the annexation of
the Netherlands to France, started for Paris at once. On the 14th the
capital heard, with amazement and alarm, that th