trife of faction and democracy,
France was progressing towards conquest. Rumour told of
armies--undisciplined, perhaps, and ill-appointed, but officered by men of
undoubted talent, and inspired by an enthusiasm which carried all before
them--crowding towards the eastern frontier of France, and hanging there
like a thundercloud, portentous of coming devastation. What was there to
meet this tide of threatened invasion? Nothing save a heptarchy of
tottering states, weak in themselves, without concert, and without
coalition--discontent amongst the lower orders, dissatisfaction with the
things that _had been_, and an evident leaning towards the things that
_might be_--the new doctrines and the new revelation. For it is well to
remark, that whatever any state might have gained by treachery or
violence, did demoralize, but certainly did not better the social
condition of the people. The wind had set in from the west, and was
carrying across Europe, even to the boundary of the Borysthenes, sparks
and flakes of fire from the great conflagration of France. There was no
lack of fuel to maintain an extended combustion, and those whose duty it
was to quench it, were unprepared or unwilling for the task.

The result of the operations of the allied forces upon and within the
frontier of France, is well known. After some success, the sole
consequence of which was to increase the jealousy which already subsisted
between the Austrian and the Prussian, the Republican army succeeded in
driving back the enemy, and establishing themselves upon the Rhine. It was
at this moment, when the danger was at its height, and all Germany,
besides Holland and the Netherlands, was exposed to the terrors of
invasion, that Frederick William of Prussia, actuated by a policy at once
base and suicidal, announced his intention of withdrawing his troops from
the ranks of the confederacy, in total violation of the defensive treaty
of 1787. It is somewhat difficult now, notwithstanding all that has been
written on the subject, to get at the real grounds of this disgraceful
proceeding. The principal alleged cause was the exhausted state of the
Prussian treasury, which, it was said, rendered it absolutely
impracticable for the king to maintain in the field, _without subsidy_,
the contingent of troops which he had solemnly bound himself to furnish
for the general defence of the Continent. It nowhere appears that any
exertion was made to recruit the Prussian finances.