more the Frenchman than the German. The offer of a throne at
Paris had pleased his fancy. He fights not against a people, whose king
he hopes to be, and against a cause, which he desires to conquer, but
not to destroy. Such was the state of the Duke of Brunswick's
mind;--consulted by the king of Prussia, he advised this monarch to turn
his forces to the Polish frontier and conquer provinces there, instead
of principles in France.

VI.

Dumouriez's plan was to separate, as much as possible, Prussia from
Austria, in order to have but one enemy at a time to cope with; and the
union of these two powers, natural and jealous rivals of each other,
appeared to him so totally unnatural, that he flattered himself he could
prevent or sever it. The instinctive hatred of despotism for liberty,
however, overthrew all his schemes. Russia, through the ascendency of
Catherine, forced Prussia and Austria to make common cause against the
Revolution. At Vienna, the young Emperor Francis I. made far greater
preparations for war than for negotiation. The Prince de Kaunitz, his
principal minister, replied to the notes of Dumouriez in language that
seemed a defiance of the Assembly. Dumouriez laid these documents before
the Assembly, and forestalled the expressions of their just indignation,
by bursting himself into patriotic anger. The _contre coup_ of these
scenes was felt even in the cabinet of the emperor at Vienna, where
Francis I., pale and trembling with rage, censured the tardiness of his
minister. He was present every day at the conferences held at the
bedside of the veteran Prince de Kaunitz and the Prussian and Russian
envoys charged by their sovereigns to foment the war. The king of
Prussia demanded to have the whole direction of the war in his hands,
and he proposed the sudden invasion of the French territory as the most
efficacious means of preventing the effusion of blood, by striking
terror into the Revolution, and causing a counter-revolution, with the
hope of which the _emigres_ flattered him, to break out in France. An
interview to concert the measures of Austria and Prussia, was fixed
between the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince de Hohenlohe, general of
the emperor's army. For form's sake, however, conferences were still
carried on at Vienna between M. de Noailles, the French ambassador, and
Count Philippe de Cobentzel, vice-chancellor of the court. These
conferences, in which the liberty of the people and the absolute