it. A general coalition was soon formed against the French revolution.
Austria engaged in it with the hope of aggrandizement, England to avenge
the American war, and to preserve itself from the spirit of the
revolution; Prussia to strengthen the threatened absolute power, and
profitably to engage its unemployed army; the German states to restore
feudal rights to some of their members who had been deprived of them, by
the abolition of the old regime in Alsace; the king of Sweden, who had
constituted himself the champion of arbitrary power, to re-establish it in
France, as he had just done in his own country; Russia, that it might
execute without trouble the partition of Poland, while the attention of
Europe was directed elsewhere; finally, all the sovereigns of the house of
Bourbon, from the interest of power and family attachments. The emigrants
encouraged them in these projects, and excited them to invasion. According
to them, France was without an army, or at least without leaders,
destitute of money, given up to disorder, weary of the assembly, disposed
to the ancient regime, and without either the means or the inclination to
defend itself. They flocked in crowds to take a share in the promised
short campaign, and formed into organized bodies under the prince de
Conde, at Worms, and the count d'Artois, at Coblentz.

The count d'Artois especially hastened the determination of the cabinets.
The emperor Leopold was in Italy, and the count repaired to him, with
Calonne as minister, and the count Alphonse de Durfort, who had been his
mediator with the court of the Tuileries, and who had brought him the
king's authority to treat with Leopold. The conference took place at
Mantua, and the count de Durfort returned, and delivered to Louis XVI. in
the name of the emperor, a secret declaration, in which was announced to
him the speedy assistance of the coalition. Austria was to advance thirty-
five thousand men on the frontier of Flanders; the German states, fifteen
thousand on Alsace; the Swiss, fifteen thousand on the Lyonese frontier;