COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 45 
ciennes, Condé, opened their gates to the enemy; May- 
ence, pressed by famine, and without the hope of relief, 
capitulated; two Spanish armies invaded our territory ; 
20,000 Piedmontese were crossing the Alps; the 40,000 
Vendéans of Cathelineau were taking Bressuire, Thouars, 
Saumur, Angers; they menaced Tours, le Mans, and 
attacked Nantes on the right bank of the Loire, whilst 
Charette manceuvred on the opposite bank ; Toulon re- 
ceived an English fleet into its port; in a word, our 
principal cities, Marseilles, Caen, Lyons, separated them- 
selves violently from the central government. 
You have now before your eyes, Gentlemen, a faint 
image of the dangers which menaced our country; and 
have some people dared to pretend that the Convention, 
that the terrible Convention, hoped to escape from the 
imminent catastrophe that almost all Europe thought 
inevitable, without even establishing a certain connec- 
tion in the operations of its generals? and can it have 
been imagined that, in entrusting one of its members 
with the almost sovereign direction of its military affairs, 
it expected from him only the methodical measures and 
regulations compassed by a purveyor or intendant of an 
army? No, no! no one could possibly in good faith 
adopt such ideas. 
Do not, however, believe that I undervalue Carnot’s 
administrative services. I admire, on the contrary, their 
noble simplicity. There was not, assuredly, at that time 
in his administration, either that inextricable series of 
scribbling which the smallest affair entails on us in the 
present day; nor that artistic network entangling every 
one, from the junior clerk of the office up to the head of 
the department, in so intricate a manner, that the firmest 
and boldest hand could not hope to break a link or sep- 
