the case occurring.--PITT TO LORD STAFFORD, _13th November
1792_.

One of the first requisites for the study of a period whose outlines are
well known, is to bar out the insidious notion that the course of events
was inevitable. Nine persons out of ten have recourse to that easy but
fallacious way of explaining events. The whole war, they say, or think,
was inevitable. It was fated that the Duke of Brunswick should issue his
threatening manifesto to the Parisians if violence were offered to
Louis XVI; that they should resent the threat, rise in revolt, and
dethrone the King, and thereafter massacre royalists in the prisons. The
innate vigour of the democratic cause further required that the French
should stand their ground at Valmy and win a pitched battle at Jemappes,
that victory leading to an exaltation of soul in which the French
Republicans pushed on their claims in such a way as to bring England
into the field. History, when written in this way, is a symmetrical
mosaic; and the human mind loves patterns.

But events are not neatly chiselled; they do not fall into geometrical
groups, however much the memory, for its own ease, seeks to arrange them
thus. Their edges are jagged; and the slightest jar might have sent them
in different ways. To recur to the events in question: the Duke of
Brunswick objected to issuing the manifesto, and only owing to the
weariness or weakness of old age, yielded to the insistence of the
_emigres_ at his headquarters: the insurrection at Paris came about
doubtfully and fitfully; the issue on 10th August hung mainly on the
personal bearing of the King; the massacres were the work of an
insignificant minority, which the vast mass regarded with sheer
stupefaction; and even the proclamation of the French Republic by the
National Convention on 21st September was not without many searchings of
heart.[83]

Meanwhile Pitt and Grenville had not the slightest inkling as to the
trend of events. The latter on 13th July 1792 wrote thus to Earl Gower
at Paris: "My speculations are that the first entrance of the foreign
troops [into France] will be followed by negotiations; but how they are
to end, or what possibility there is to establish any form of
government, or any order in France, is far beyond any conjectures I can
form."[84] This uncertainty is illuminating. It shows that Pitt and
Grenville were not farseeing schemers bent on undermining the liberties
of France and Britain by a w