eldt,
for that is rather a pretext in order to animate the people and
preserve their enthusiasm, but to get rid of 300,000 armed
vagabonds, who can never be allowed to return without evident
risk to the Convention and Executive Council.... It is her
opinion [Madame Roland's] and mine that we cannot make peace
with the Emperor without danger to the Republic, and that it
would be hazardous to recall an army, flushed with victory and
impatient to gather fresh laurels, into the heart of a country
whose commerce and manufactures have lost their activity, and
which would leave the disbanded multitude without resources or
employment.[138]

These words are noteworthy; for they show that prudential or party
motives led some at least of the Girondins, formerly friends of England,
to desire an extension of the war.

In England, too, the war spirit was rising. The traditional loyalty of
the land had been strengthened by the tactful behaviour of George III
since Pitt's accession to power. These feelings warmed to a steady glow
at the time of the King's illness in 1788-9; and now the trial of
Louis XVI, albeit on grounds which Britons could not understand, seemed
an act of contemptible cruelty. To bring Louis from Versailles to Paris,
to load him with indignities at the Tuileries, to stop his despairing
bolt for freedom, to compass his downfall, to attack him in his palace
and massacre his defenders, to depose him, and now to try him for his
life for the crime of helping on his would-be deliverers, appeared to a
nation of sportsmen a series of odious outrages on the laws of fair
play. The action of certain Radical Clubs in sending addresses of
congratulation to the National Convention also aroused deep disgust; and
(as Bland Burges wrote to Auckland on 18th December) Loyal Associations
sprang up on all sides.[139] A typical address was sent by the Dover
Association to Pitt, as Lord Warden, on 19th December, asking for
permission to take arms in defence of King and Constitution against
invaders from without or levellers within.[140] The example was widely
followed; and thus, as usually happens in this land, the puny
preparations of Government were helped on by the eager exertions of the
people.

The revulsion in public opinion early in December was so marked as to
impress even Chauvelin. He warned Lebrun that within a month the English
had so changed as scarcely to be recognizable; but h