rity.

During this and the succeeding year the war was continued with
unbroken perseverance and a constant fluctuation in its results.
In the various battles which were fought, and the sieges which took
place, the English army was, as usual, in the foremost ranks, under
the Duke of York, second son of George III. The Prince of Orange,
at the head of the Dutch troops, proved his inheritance of the
valor which seems inseparable from the name of Nassau. The archduke
Charles laid the foundation of his subsequent high reputation.
The emperor Francis himself fought valiantly at the head of his
troops. But all the coalesced courage of these princes and their
armies could not effectually stop the progress of the republican
arms. The battle of Fleurus rendered the French completely masters
of Belgium; and the representatives of the city of Brussels once
more repaired to the national convention of France, to solicit
the reincorporation of the two countries. This was not, however,
finally pronounced till the 1st of October, 1795, by which time
the violence of an arbitrary government had given the people a
sample of what they were to expect. The Austrian Netherlands and
the province of Liege were divided into nine departments, forming
an integral part of the French republic; and this new state of
things was consolidated by the preliminaries of peace, signed
at Leoben in Styria, between the French general Bonaparte and the
archduke Charles, and confirmed by the treaty of Campo-Formio
on the 17th of October, 1797.

CHAPTER XXII

FROM THE INVASION OF HOLLAND BY THE FRENCH TO THE RETURN OF THE
PRINCE OF ORANGE

A.D. 1794--1818

While the fate of Belgium was decided on the plains of Fleurus,
Pichegru prepared to carry the triumphant arms of France into
the heart of Holland. He crossed the Meuse at the head of one
hundred thousand men, and soon gained possession of most of the
chief places of Flanders. An unusually severe winter was setting
in; but a circumstance which in common cases retards the operations
of war was, in the present instance, the means of hurrying on the
conquest on which the French general was bent. The arms of the
sea, which had hitherto been the best defences of Holland, now
became solid masses of ice; battlefields, on which the soldiers
manoeuvred and the artillery thundered, as if the laws of the
elements were repealed to hasten the fall of the once proud and
long flourishing republic. Nothing could