On the other hand, Great Britain during the same year drew closer the ties binding her to her still remaining allies. An agreement was made in May with the emperor of Germany that he should provide not less than two hundred thousand men for the approaching campaign, while Great Britain was to pay a large subsidy for their support. This was followed by a treaty of defensive alliance, each government engaging not to make a separate peace. With Russia also was made a defensive alliance, and the czarina sent twelve ships-of-the-line to cruise with the British fleet in the North Sea.
THE YEAR 1795 IN THE ATLANTIC AND ON THE CONTINENT.
The year 1795 was for France one of reaction and lassitude. The wave of popular ferment which had been rushing forward since the fall of the royalty, gathering strength and volume, and driving before it all wills and all ambitions, crested and broke in July, 1794. Like the breakers of the seashore, a part of the accumulated momentum was expended in a tumultuous momentary advance, of increased force but diminishing depth, and then recession followed. The forward and backward impulses met and mingled, causing turmoil and perplexing currents of popular feeling, but the pure republican movement had reached the highest point it was destined to attain. It had stirred France to its depths, and brought to the surface many a gem which under quieter conditions would have remained hidden from the eyes of men; but, in the confusion and paralysis which followed, these were left stranded and scattered, waiting for the master hand which should combine them and set each in its proper sphere for the glory of France.
The recoil which followed the death of Robespierre took shape in several ways, all tending at once to lessen the internal vigor of the government, and to deprive it of means hitherto possessed for external effort. The revulsion to mercy provoked by his bloody tyranny was accompanied by sentiments of vengeance against the men who were, or were supposed to be, identified with his policy. The indulgence extended to those before proscribed brought them back to France in numbers, clamorous for revenge. These discordant sentiments, agitating the Convention as well as the people, the provinces as well as Paris, shattered that unity of purpose which had been the strength of the government after the fall of the Girondists, and during the domination of the Jacobins. At the same time were revoked the measures by which the Revolutionary Government, living as it did from hand to mouth, had provided for its immense daily necessities. The law of the Maximum, by which dealers were forbidden to charge beyond a certain fixed price for the prime necessaries of life, was repealed. The paper money, already depreciated, fell rapidly, now that the seller could demand as much as he wished for articles of universal consumption. The government, obliged to receive the assignats at their face value in payment of dues, sought to meet its difficulty by increased issues, which accelerated the decline. At the same time, requisitions in kind having been suppressed, as part of the reaction from a rule of force, supplies of all sorts were with difficulty obtained. Distress, lack of confidence, abounded in all directions; speculation ran riot, and the government, having relaxed the spring of terror, that most powerful of motives until it becomes unendurable, found itself drifting into impotence. These various measures were not completed till near the end of 1794; and the evil effect was, therefore, not immediately felt in the armies,—whose wants were also in part supplied by liberal demands upon their new allies in Holland. Boissi d'Anglas, in a speech made January 30, 1795, in the Convention, and adopted by that body as voicing its own sentiments, declared that the armies would demonstrate to Europe that, far from being exhausted by the three years of war, France had only augmented her resources. The year then opening was to witness to the emptiness of the boast, until Bonaparte by his military genius laid the Continent again at her feet.