ith Mr. Morris, that the only hope of France lay
in the suppression of internal disorder and the union of interests which
a foreign war would bring about, yet he could not regard with much
horror the threatenings of the proscribed emigres and the military
preparations making by the allies to prevent the spread of the
revolution into their own territories. Indeed, so great was his contempt
for the ministers of Louis and for their mad and selfish policy that he
confessed to himself, but for his desire to serve under his old
commander, he would almost as soon have joined d'Azay at Brussels, or
taken a commission with the Austrians under Marshal Bender, who
commanded in the Low Countries. This division of sympathies felt by
Calvert animated thousands of other breasts, so that whole regiments of
cavalry went over to the enemy, and officers and men deserted daily.
Berwick, Mirabeau, Bussy, de la Chatre, with their commands, crossed
over the Rhine and joined the Prince de Conde at Worms. The highest in
command were suspected of intriguing with the enemy; men distrusted
their superiors, and officers could place no reliance on their men. Of
the widespread and profound character of this feeling of distrust Mr.
Calvert had no adequate idea until he joined the army of the centre at
Metz in the middle of April. Although Lafayette had, since January, been
endeavoring to discipline his troops, to animate them with confidence,
courage, and endurance, they had defied his every effort. Indeed, what
wonder that an army composed of the scum of a revolutionary populace,
without knowledge of arms, suspicious, violent, unused to every form of
military restraint, should defy organization in three months? Perhaps no
sovereign ever entered upon a great conflict less prepared than did
Louis when he declared war against the King of Hungary and Bohemia--for
Francis was not yet crowned Emperor of Austria. But that unhappy monarch
found himself in a situation from which the only issue was a recourse to
arms. Confronted on the one hand by a republican party of daily
increasing power and on the other by an aristocratical one openly allied
with sovereigns who were suspected of a desire to partition his dominion
among themselves as Poland had been, his one hope lay in warring his way
out between the two.

That Louis should be the advocate and leader of this war was the one
inspiration of Narbonne, and, had the King persevered in this, he might
have saved