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little centripetal force. In 1795 Prussia, Spain, and Tuscany withdrew for reasons already indicated in another connection, and made their peace on terms as advantageous as they could secure. Holland was conquered by France in the winter of 1794-95, and to this day the illustrated school-books recall to every child of the French Republic the half-fabulous tale of how a Dutch fleet was captured by French hussars. The severity of the cold was long remembered as phenomenal, and the frozen harbors rendered naval resistance impossible, while cavalry manoeuvered with safety on the thick ice. The Batavian Republic, as the Dutch commonwealth was now called, was really an appanage of France. But England and Austria, though deserted by their strongest allies, were still redoubtable enemies. The policy of the former had been to command the seas and destroy the commerce of France on the one hand, on the other to foment disturbance in the country itself by subsidizing the royalists. In both plans she had been successful: her fleets were ubiquitous, the Chouan and Vendean uprisings were perennial, and the emigrant aristocrats menaced every frontier. Austria, on the other hand, had once been soundly thrashed. Since Frederick the Great had wrested Silesia from her, and thereby set Protestant Prussia among the great powers, she had felt that the balance of power was disturbed, and had sought everywhere for some territorial acquisition to restore her importance. The present emperor, Francis II, and his adroit minister, Thugut, were equally stubborn in their determination to draw something worth while from the seething caldron before the fires of war were extinguished. They thought of Bavaria, of Poland, of Turkey, and of Italy; in the last country especially it seemed as if the term of life had been reached for Venice, and that at her impending demise her fair domains on the mainland would amply replace Silesia. Russia saw her own advantage in the weakening either of Turkey or of the central European powers, and became the silent ally of Austria in this policy. The great armies of the French republic had been created by Carnot, with the aid of his able lieutenant, Dubois de Crance; they were organized and directed by the unassisted genius of the former. Being the first national armies which Europe had known, they were animated as no others had been by that form of patriotism which rests not merely on animal instinct, but on a princi
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