74] 
conveniency, distressing as it was, 
than to run the danger of an insur- 
re€tion from people who certainly 
would not have tamely submitted 
to a deprivation of whatever was 
considered as their due. So great 
indeed was become the wretched- 
ness of the inhabitants in some of 
the countries subdued by France, 
that it was judged equally requisite 
to relieve their wants by the dona- 
tion of necessaries. In order, at 
the same time, to conciliate the in- 
ferior classes, the weight of the 
taxes was carefully thrown on the~ 
people of property, and repartitioned 
among these with the strictest regard 
to the proportion of their income. 
In the midst of every discourage- 
ment, arising from the shattered 
state of their finances, the French 
determined to venture another cam- 
paign, for the final humiliation of 
their enemies, as they said, and to 
bring them to such terms as would 
completely. disable them from re- 
newing any attempt against the li- 
berty of France. The secession of 
Prussia, the ina¢tivity of the Ger- 
man princes in the common de- 
fence of the empire, and the treaty 
they were negotiating with Spain, 
accelerated their motions in the 
Netherlands, where they opened 
the operations of the campaign on 
that side, by pressing the siege, or 
rather the blockade, of the strong 
town of Luxemburgh. General 
Bender, the governor, was at the 
head of a strong garrison, no less 
than ten thousand men. He was an 
officer of great bravery and experi- 
ence, and it was thought the French 
would not have been able to master 
it. It might, it has been said, have 
held out longer; but the certainty 
that no succours could approach it, 
and the inutility of delaying a sur- 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1793. 
render, which must probably take 
place at last, determined the gover- 
nor to capitulate, in order to avoid 
the needless loss of lives. He was, 
with his garrison, permitted to re- 
tire to Germany, on condition of 
not serving against France uil regu 
larly exchanged. The reduttion of 
this fortress happened on the se- 
venth of June, 
The French had only one place 
more to reduce, inorder to compass 
that object, which was to crown 
their military operations. This was, 
to make a conquest of the strong and 
important city of Mentz, by the 
acquisition of which they would re. 
gain the ancient boundary between 
Germany and Gaul, the river Rhine. 
This, they often said, was the ex- 
tremest limit of their ambition. 
When once obtained, they would 
give up all ideas of extending their 
dominions beyond it. But a project 
of thiskind involved somany dange- 
rous consequences to the adjacent 
powers, that necessity alone would 
compel them to submit to it. The 
very countries which, in such case, 
they proposed to annex to France; 
would form with 1t an empire com- 
pletely destructive of the balance of 
power. And it was not clear that 
the inhabitants of these countrics 
would willingly become a portion 
of France, especially since the 
revolution, that had wrought such 
a change in the minds and cha- . 
racter of the French. But these had 
now contracted so high an opinion 
of their national dignity, that they 
were fully persuaded the people’ in 
the proximity of France would 
think it both honourable and ad- 
vantageous to be admitted to an in. 
corporation, 
But the situation of Mentz was 
itself a protection against the at- 
tempts 
