to the potency of the new and as yet allied
forces--Democracy and Nationality. In 1792 Democracy girded itself
eagerly against the semi-feudal Powers, Austria and Prussia; but the
strength latent in the French people appeared only in the next year
when, on the accession of England, Spain, and the Empire to the
Coalition, plans were discussed of detaching Alsace, Lorraine,
Roussillon, and Flanders.[337] To these sacrilegious schemes the French
patriots opposed the dogma of Rousseau--the indivisibility of the
general will. "Perish 25,000,000 Frenchmen rather than the Republic one
and indivisible." This perfervid, if illogical, exclamation of a
Commissioner of the Convention reveals something of that passion for
unity which now fused together the French nation. Some peoples merge
themselves slowly together under the shelter of kindred beliefs and
institutions. Others again, after feeling their way towards closer
union, finally achieve it in the explosion of war or revolution. The
former case was the happy lot of the British nation; the latter, that of
the French. Pitt, with his essentially English outlook, failed to
perceive that the diverse peoples grouped together under the French
monarchy had now attained to an indissoluble unity under the stress of
the very blows which he and his Allies dealt in Flanders, Alsace, and
Provence.

For by this time the counter-strokes dealt by the Republicans were
telling with fatal effect on their adversaries. The failure of the
Spanish campaign in Roussillon and the irruption of a French force into
Catalonia dashed the spirits of that weak and wavering monarch,
Charles IV; and already whispers were heard that peace with France was
necessary. The disputes with England concerning Nootka Sound and affairs
at Toulon predisposed the King and his people to think with less horror
of the regicides of Paris. As for Sardinia, the childish obscurantism of
the Court of Turin had nursed to quick life a mushroom growth of
Jacobinism. The army defending the Alpine passes was honeycombed with
discontent; and the suspicious conduct of Austria towards her little
ally foreshadowed the divisions and disasters which quickly followed on
the advent of Bonaparte at that theatre of the war.

It was clear that only from London could come the impulse which would
invigorate this anaemic Coalition. Pitt sought to impart such an impulse
in the King's Speech at the opening of the Session of 1794. It had
throughout