time; and the
allied armies which might have marched upon Paris were purposely
frittered away in sieges in the Netherlands and the Rhine.

[Sidenote: The revival of France.]

Such a policy gave France all that she needed to recover from the shock
of her past disasters: it gave her time. Whatever were the crimes and
tyranny of her leaders, the country felt in spite of them the value of
the Revolution, and rallied enthusiastically to its support. The
strength of the revolt in La Vendee was broken. The insurrection in the
south was drowned in blood. The Spanish invaders were held at bay at the
foot of the Pyrenees, and the Piedmontese were driven from Nice and
Savoy. At the close of the year a fresh blow fell upon the struggling
country in the revolt of Toulon, the naval station of its Mediterranean
fleet. The town called for foreign aid against the government at Paris;
and Lord Hood entered the port with an English squadron, while a force
of 11,000 men, gathered hastily from every quarter, was despatched under
General O'Hara as a garrison. But the successes against Spain and Savoy
freed the hands of France at this critical moment: the town was at once
invested, and the seizure of a promontory which commanded the harbour, a
step counselled by a young artillery officer, Napoleon Buonaparte,
brought about the withdrawal of the garrison and the surrender of
Toulon. The success was a prelude of what was to come. At the opening of
1794 a victory at Fleurus, which again made the French masters of the
Netherlands, showed that the tide had turned. France was united within
by the cessation of the Terror and of the tyranny of the Jacobins, while
on every border victory followed the gigantic efforts with which she
met the coalition against her. The coalition indeed was fast breaking
up. Spain sued for peace. Prussia, more intent on her gains in the east
than on any battle with the revolution on the west, prepared to follow
Spain's example by the withdrawal of her armies from the Rhine. It was
only by English subsidies that Austria and Sardinia were still kept in
the field; and the Rhine provinces were wrested from the first, while
the forces of Sardinia were driven back from the Riviera and the
Maritime Alps into the plain of Piedmont. Before the year ended Holland
was lost. Pichegru crossed the Waal in midwinter with an overwhelming
force, and the wretched remnant of ten thousand men who had followed the
Duke of York to the Netherl