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, and the National Guards deserted their colors and returned to France. The only hope of the Republicans, at this crisis, was Vauban's line of Flemish fortresses. These alone saved France. The strongholds of Lille, Conde, Valenciennes, Quesnoy, Landrecies, &c., held the Austrians in check till the French could raise new forces and reorganize their army. "The important breathing-time which the sieges of these fortresses," says an English historian, "afforded to the French, and the immense advantage which they derived from the new levies which they received, and fresh organization which they acquired during that important period, is a signal proof of the vital importance of fortresses in contributing to national defence. Napoleon has not hesitated to ascribe to the three months thus gained the salvation of France. It is to be constantly recollected that the Republican armies were then totally unable to keep the field; that behind the frontier fortresses there was neither a defensive position, nor a corps to reinforce them; and that if driven from their vicinity, the capital was taken and the war concluded." In the following year, 1794, when France had completed her vast armaments, and, in her turn, had become the invading power, the enemy had no fortified towns to check the progress of the Republican armies; which, based on strong works of defence, in a few weeks overran Flanders, and drove the allies beyond the Rhine. In the campaign of 1796, when the army of Moreau had been forced into a precipitate retreat by the admirable strategic operations of the Archduke Charles, the French forces owed their safety to the fortifications on the Rhine. These works arrested the enemy's pursuit and obliged him to resort to the tedious operations of sieges; and the reduction of the French advanced posts alone, Kehl and Huninguen, poorly as they were defended, employed all the resources of the Austrian army, and the skill of their engineers, from early in October till late in February. Kehl was at first assaulted by a force _four_ times as numerous as the garrison; if the enemy had succeeded, he would have cut off Moreau's retreat, and destroyed his army. Fortunately the place was strong enough to resist all assaults; and Moreau, basing himself on the fortresses of Alsace, his right covered by Huninguen, Neuf-Brisach, and Befort, and his left by the iron barrier of the Netherlands, effectually checked the waves of Austrian success.
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