[333] "Life of T. Hardy," 42; "State Trials," xxiv, 717, 729, 762, etc. The evidence fills 1,207 pages.
The main object of His Majesty is the keeping together by influence and weight this great Confederation by which alone the designs of France can be resisted, and which, if left to itself, would be too likely to fall to pieces from the jarring interests of the Powers engaged in it.--GRENVILLE TO MALMESBURY, _21st April 1794_.
The disgraceful failure of every military operation His Prussian Majesty has undertaken since the year 1791 has destroyed the reputation of the Prussian army; and the duplicity and versatility of his Cabinet put an end to all confidence and good faith.--MALMESBURY TO GRENVILLE, _20th September 1794_.
As in parliamentary life, so too in the wider spheres of diplomacy and warfare, a Coalition very rarely holds together under a succession of sharp blows. This is inherent in the nature of things. A complex or heterogeneous substance is easily split up by strokes which leave a homogeneous body intact. Rocks of volcanic origin defy the hammer under which conglomerates crumble away; and when these last are hurled against granite or flint, they splinter at once. Well might Shakespeare speak through the mouth of Ulysses these wise words on the divisions of the Greeks before Troy:
Look how many Grecian tents do stand Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions. ... Troy in our weakness stands, not in her strength.[335]
Pitt and his colleagues were under no illusion as to the weakness of the first Coalition against France. They well knew the incurable jealousies of the Houses of Hapsburg and Hohenzollern, the utter weakness of the Holy Roman Empire, the poverty or torpor of Spain, Sardinia, and Naples, the potent distractions produced by the recent partition of Poland, and the Machiavellian scheme of the Empress Catharine II to busy the Central Powers in French affairs so that she might have a free hand at Warsaw. All this and much more stood revealed to them. But they grounded their hopes of success on two important considerations; first, that the finances of France were exhausted; secondly, that the rule of the Jacobins, fertile in forced loans, forced service, and guillotining, must speedily collapse. On the subject of French finance there are many notes in the Pitt Papers, which show that Pitt believed an utter breakdown to be imminent. Grenville, too, at the close of October 1793, stated that France had lost at least 200,000 soldiers, while more than 50,000 were in hospital. The repugnance to military service was universal, and the deficit for the month of August alone was close on £17,000,000.[336]