78] 
with all the requisites for such an 
attempt. The town of Luxem- 
burg itself was supplied with a nu- 
merous garrison, and with stores and 
provisions for a twelvemonth; but 
the apprehensions excited by the 
divers movements of the Austrians, 
terminated in some incursions in the 
neighbourhood of that fortress, and 
of Treves, and the adjacent dis-. 
tri@s. he resistance of the French 
became at last so vigorous and suc- 
cessful, that the Austrians could not 
extend themselyes beyond the li- 
mits which they had occupied, 
when they first compelled the 
French to retire to the left side of 
the Rhine. They continued to dis- 
pute the ground with great obsti- 
nacy and loss of blood on both sides, 
till the severity of winter induced 
both parties to suspend hostilities 
for the space of three months. 
On the Italian frontiers of 
France, the arms of the republic did 
not perform any achievements equal 
to those in the foregoing campaign. 
The superiority of strength lay on 
the side of Austria, and the utmost 
that could be done by the French 
was, to maintain themselves in the 
posts which they had already occu- 
pied. All parties, in truth, seemed 
willing to indulge in some respite of 
the dreadful trials and labours they 
had undergone, and to wait for the 
arising of some event that might 
open a prospect of their cessation. 
The only two powers combined 
against France were not sufficiently 
recovered from the alarm occasioned 
by the declaration of their associ- 
ates, to frame any great and deci- 
sive designs against France: and the 
republic had wasted so much of its 
strength in the wonderful exertions 
it had made, that whatever the 
friends of that system might pretend, 
ANNUAL REGISTER, 1795. 
it wanted rest even more than its 
neighbours. 
While the republican armies had, 
in the commencement of 1795, 
and the close of 1794, been em- 
ployed in reducing so many coun- 
tries, and spreading every where 
the terror of the French arms, the 
condition of the interior, in that vast 
country, was still wretched and de- 
plorable, through the animosities 
between the two parties that di- 
vided the nation. The republi- 
cans held out to the public the tro- 
phies of so many vi€tories won, and 
so many people subdued, and loftily 
demanded at what peried of the 
monarchy the French had ever ar- 
rived at such a summit of glory? 
But the reyalists, noless indignantly, 
asked, when it was that France had 
seen such torrents of blood of its 
inhabitants shed by any of its for- 
mer rulers? The very worst of 
preceding administrations, under the 
very worst of their kings, were 
models of virtue, of uprightness, 
of lenity, when compared to the 
very best of those fleeting phan- 
toms of government that had arisen 
and disappeared like meteors, and 
left nothing but the remembrance of 
the iniquities through which the 
vilest of men rose to power, and 
maintained themselves in it, and, 
through which they had been de- 
prived of it by others as wicked as 
themselves. _ 
The mass of the French people, 
though remarkably fond of national 
honour, and willing to suffer much 
for the attaining of it, had, under 
the dreadful government of Rober- 
spierre, forgotten almost every sen-+ 
sation but that of terror. None 
but the most violent abettors of the 
severest republicanism had ex- 
pressed any other sentiments than 
. those 
