ll not long hold the reins at Westminster.
Besides, no device for weakening France was deemed more effective than
that of seizing her wealthiest group of colonies. On the other hand,
there was pressing need of armed help for the Royalists of Brittany; and
on this ground we must pronounce the West India enterprise ill timed. A
still worse blunder was the continued inactivity of Moira's force in the
Solent and the Channel Islands. The reports of an intended French
invasion form a wholly inadequate excuse for his inaction. His troops
could have rendered valuable service either in Brittany, Flanders, or at
Toulon. The riddle of their inaction has never been solved. Ultimately
the blame must rest with Pitt, Dundas, and Lord Chatham.[413]

In 1794 Pitt hoped to retrieve the failures of the first campaign and to
wear down the French defence. For this purpose he liberally subsidized
Austria and concluded with Prussia a treaty which, with better
management, might have brought a second highly efficient army into
Flanders. The compacts of that springtide warranted the hope that
340,000 allied troops would advance on the north and north-east
frontiers of France. They were not forthcoming; but, even as it was, the
Imperialists and the Duke of York routed the French levies in Flanders
and seemed about to open the way to Paris. Earl Howe's victory, named
"the glorious first of June," ensured supremacy in the Channel. Brittany
and la Vendee were again aflame. The Union Jack replaced the tricolour
on the strongholds of Corsica and in the most fertile parts of the West
Indies. In April-May 1794 the collapse of the Jacobins seemed imminent.

But these early triumphs of the Allies were almost as fatal as their
later disasters. Indeed they were largely the cause of them. Believing
that they had the game in their hands, Prussia and Austria relaxed their
efforts at the very time when France girded herself for a mightier
struggle. Moreover, the emergence of the Polish Question in an acute
phase served once again to distract the German rivals and to weaken
their efforts in the West. Moreover, the Anglo-Prussian Treaty of May
1794 prescribing the valley of the Meuse as the sphere of action of the
62,400 Prussians subsidized by England and Holland was so rigid as to
furnish their generals with good excuses for refusing to march from the
Palatinate across the front of the French columns now pressing forward.
The upshot was that England and the Dut