The successes of the French were favoured by the fact that the enemy never put their whole heart into the affair, as they were preoccupied by the partition of Poland, which they effected in 1793-5.Each Power wished to be on the spot in order to obtain more territory.This motive had already caused the King of Prussia to retire after the battle of Valmy in 1792.
The hesitations of the allies and their mutual distrust were extremely advantageous to the French.Had the Austrians marched upon Paris in the summer of 1793, ``we should,'' said General Thiebault, ``have lost a hundred times for one.They alone saved us, by giving us time to make soldiers, officers, and generals.''
After the treaty of Basle, France had no important adversaries on the Continent, save the Austrians.It was then that the Directory attacked Austria in Italy.Bonaparte was entrusted with the charge of this campaign.After a year of fighting, from April, 1796, to April, 1797, he forced the last enemies of France to demand peace.
3.Psychological and Military Factors which determined the Success of the Revolutionary Armies.
To realise the causes of the success of the revolutionary armies we must remember the prodigious enthusiasm, endurance, and abnegation of these ragged and often barefoot troops.Thoroughly steeped in revolutionary principles, they felt that they were the apostles of a new religion, which was destined to regenerate the world.
The history of the armies of the Revolution recalls that of the nomads of Arabia, who, excited to fanaticism by the ideals of Mohammed, were transformed into formidable armies which rapidly conquered a portion of the old Roman world.An analogous faith endowed the Republican soldiers with a heroism and intrepidity which never failed them, and which no reverse could shake When the Convention gave place to the Directory they had liberated the country, and had carried a war of invasion into the enemy's territory.At this period the soldiers were the only true Republicans left in France.
Faith is contagious, and the Revolution was regarded as a new era, so that several of the nations invaded, oppressed by the absolutism of their monarchs, welcomed the invaders as liberators.The inhabitants of Savoy ran out to meet the troops.
At Mayence the crowd welcomed them with enthusiasm planted trees of liberty, and formed a Convention in imitation of that of Paris.
So long as the armies of the Revolution had to deal with peoples bent under the yoke of absolute monarchy, and having no personal ideal to defend, their success was relatively easy.But when they entered into conflict with peoples who had an ideal as strong as their own victory became far more difficult.
The new ideal of liberty and equality was capable of seducing peoples who had no precise convictions, and were suffering from the despotism of their masters, but it was naturally powerless against those who possessed a potent ideal of their own which had been long established in their minds.For this reason Bretons and Vendeeans, whose religious and monarchical sentiments were extremely powerful, successfully struggled for years against the armies of the Republic.
In March, 1793, the insurrections of the Vendee and Brittany had spread to ten departments.The Vendeeans in Poitou and the Chouans in Brittany put 80,000 men in the field.
The conflicts between contrary ideals--that is, between beliefs in which reason can play no part--are always pitiless, and the struggle with the Vendee immediately assumed the ferocious savagery always observable in religious wars.It lasted until the end of 1795, when Hoche finally ``pacified'' the country.
This pacification was the simple result of the practical extermination of its defenders.
