for Guelderland. These last were to be paid by the Maritime
Powers. In reserve were 33,000 Prussians, under Hohenlohe-Kirchberg. For
the invasion of Eastern France, Frederick William of Prussia marshalled,
near Frankfurt, a force of 42,000 of his own troops, together with
14,000 other Germans. Further south was General Wurmser with 24,000
Austrians. And this was not all. The Holy Roman Empire promised a force
of 120,000, whenever its Translucencies, Bishops, Abbesses, and Knights
could muster them; and further east there loomed the hosts of Russia. If
these forces had been used straightforwardly, France must have been
overborne.[201]

But the half of them were not used at all. Before the campaign opened,
the eastern cyclone drew to itself the energies which ostensibly were
directed against France. Just one week before the execution of
Louis XVI, five Prussian columns crossed the borders of Poland. This act
aroused a furious outcry, especially as Frederick William preluded it by
a manifesto hypocritically dwelling upon the danger of allowing
Jacobinism to take root in Poland. Fears of Prussian and Muscovite
rapacity had induced Pitt and Grenville to seek disclaimers of partition
at Berlin and St. Petersburg. Assurances enough were forthcoming. On
29th January 1793 Markoff sought to convince Whitworth that no partition
was intended.[202] But in view of the entire passivity of Pitt on the
Polish Question since his surrender to Catharine in 1791 the two Powers
laid their plans for the act of robbery which took place a few months
later.[203]

In this they had the rather doubtful acquiescence of Austria, provided
that they furthered the Belgic-Bavarian exchange so long favoured at
Vienna and resisted at Berlin. As we have seen, Pitt strongly opposed
the exchange; but, early in February 1793, Grenville and he heard that
the Emperor Francis II hoped to facilitate the transference of the
Elector of Bavaria from Munich to Brussels by adding Lille and
Valenciennes to his new dominion.[204] These tidings led them to adopt a
decision which was largely to influence the course of the war. They
resolved to commit Austria deeply to war with France by favouring the
acquisition of Lille and Valenciennes by the Hapsburgs provided that
they retained Belgium. This, however, was far from the wishes of that
Court, which longed for parts of Alsace and Lorraine, and viewed Belgium
merely as a sop to be flung to the Elector of Bavaria.[205]