to save the King; they voted for his death with the hope of maintaining
their influence in Paris, and of clearing themselves from the charge of
lukewarmness in the cause of the Revolution. But the sacrifice was as vain
as it was dishonourable. The populace and the party of the Mountain took
the act in its true character, as an acknowledgment of their own victory. A
series of measures was brought forward providing for the poorer classes at
the expense of the wealthy. The Gironde, now forced to become the defenders
of property, encountered the fatal charge of deserting the cause of the
people; and from this time nothing but successful foreign warfare could
have saved their party from ruin.

[Defeat and treason of Dumouriez, March, 1793.]

Instead of success came inaction, disaster, and treason. The army of
Flanders lay idle during January and February for want of provisions and
materials of war; and no sooner had Dumouriez opened the campaign against
Holland than he was recalled by intelligence that the Austrians had fallen
upon his lieutenant, Miranda, at Maestricht, and driven the French army
before them. Dumouriez returned, in order to fight a pitched battle before
Brussels. He attacked the Austrians at Neerwinden (March 18), and suffered
a repulse inconsiderable in itself, but sufficient to demoralise an army
composed in great part of recruits and National Guards. [26] His defeat
laid Flanders open to the Austrians; but Dumouriez intended that it should
inflict upon the Republic a far heavier blow. Since the execution of the
King, he had been at open enmity with the Jacobins. He now proposed to the
Austrian commander to unite with him in an attack upon the Convention, and
in re-establishing monarchy in France. The first pledge of Dumouriez's
treason was the surrender of three commissioners sent by the Convention to
his camp; the second was to have been the surrender of the fortress of
Conde. But Dumouriez had overrated his influence with the army. Plainer