h an ever-growing severity by a nation whose chief instinct
was one of order, whose bent was to practical politics, whose temper was
sober and trustful, whose passionate love of personal liberty was only
equalled by its passionate abhorrence of bloodshed in civil strife, and
whose ecclesiastical and political institutions were newly endeared to
it by a fresh revival of religious feeling, and by the constitutional
attitude of its Government for a hundred years.

[Sidenote: The coalition against France.]

Sympathy in fact was soon limited to a few groups of reformers who
gathered in "Constitutional Clubs," and whose reckless language
quickened the national reaction. But in spite of Burke's appeals and the
cries of the nobles who had fled from France and longed only to march
against their country, Europe held back from any attack on the
Revolution, and Pitt preserved his attitude of neutrality, though with a
greater appearance of reserve. So anxious, in fact, did the aspect of
affairs in the East make him for the restoration of tranquillity in
France, that he foiled a plan which its emigrant nobles had formed for a
descent on the French coast, and declared formally at Vienna that
England would remain absolutely neutral should hostilities arise between
France and the Emperor. But the Emperor was as anxious to avoid a French
war as Pitt himself. Though Catharine, now her strife with Turkey was
over, wished to plunge the two German powers into a struggle with the
Revolution which would leave her free to annex Poland single-handed,
neither Leopold nor Prussia would tie their hands by such a contest. The
flight of Lewis the Sixteenth from Paris in June 1791 brought Europe for
a moment to the verge of war; but he was intercepted and brought back:
and for a while the danger seemed to incline the revolutionists in
France to greater moderation. Lewis too not only accepted the
Constitution, but pleaded earnestly with the Emperor against any armed
intervention as certain to bring ruin to his throne. In their conference
at Pillnitz therefore, in August, Leopold and the king of Prussia
contented themselves with a vague declaration inviting the European
powers to co-operate in restoring a sound form of government in France,
availed themselves of England's neutrality to refuse all military aid to
the French princes, and dealt simply with the affairs of Poland. But the
peace they desired soon became impossible. The Constitutional Royalist