506 Chapter XXI
them with a skepticism mixed with scorn. The French authorities and the foreign
revolutionaries were willing to use each other—each for their own ends. Idealism
existed, but it too was something to be used.
It was the weakness of the governments of the Coalition that brought their
ruin, as much as the power generated in France in the Year II, and more than the
strength of revolutionary agitation within their respective borders. With their
trained armies in headlong retreat, the governments tried to appeal to their civilian
populations. In Catalonia, the Rhineland, the Austrian and the Dutch Nether-
lands, the year 1794 saw attempts to invoke a mass rising against the French in-
vaders. The conservative powers in desperation proclaimed the levée en masse for
their own purposes.
The Emperor called for a “general arming” in Belgium. “Religion, constitution,
property, the sovereign who wears you in his heart... these are the watchwords
that will organize you.” He added that service would be neither long nor difficult.
The Prince of Orange appealed to the Dutch: “I call upon you.... Here are arms
and powder.... Take them!... Soldiers, citizens and peasants, let us all unani-
mously assemble!” He added that no one need leave his own province. The Prince
of Coburg, commanding the Austrian army, tried to rally the Rhineland Germans:
“Rise then, German friends and brothers! Procure us subsistence.... Share with us
your savings.... Employ the treasures of your churches.... Arm yourselves, valor-
ous men! Rise by thousands!” And in Catalonia, in default of action by the Madrid
government, local leaders issued an appeal for men and money: “Catalans, your
country is in danger!”^1
All these appeals came to nothing, except in Spain. Catalonia, indeed, seems to
have been the one part of Europe where a general rising took place successfully for
strictly conservative purposes. Here the issue was mainly religion. The French re-
publicans were portrayed as fiends and monsters, and the Catalans went beyond
the requirements of Christianity in defense of Holy Church. French generals
found the mutilated dead bodies of their men with the genitals stuffed in the
mouth.^2
Further north the call was a total failure. In part, the governments were afraid of
their own peoples. The King of Prussia feared that the arming of peasants would
ruin both the regular army and the “constitution of the empire.” In Holland it was
feared that the Dutch farmers, if armed, would turn upon their supposed allies, the
British army in disorderly retreat. The call failed also because it could inspire no
idealism or sacrifice. Property, constitution, and the father- image of a benign ruler
could hardly stir people as civilized as the Dutch, Belgians, and Rhinelanders;
Such a watchword lacked the ringing echoes of the French levée of 1793: “The
French people risen against tyrants!” The citizens (who were not really “citizens”)
1 On the appeals for a mass rising in the Austrian and Dutch Netherlands and in the Rhineland
see the Annual Register for 1794 (London, 1799), 59, 204, 212–14, 232. Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken
der algemeene geschiedenis van Nederland (The Hague, 1905), I, 470–72, 504, 547, 577, contains details
on the attempt and failure of a mass rising in the United Provinces. For Catalonia, see A. Ossorio y
Gallardo, Historia del pensamiento politico Catalan durante la guerra de Espana con la Republica francese,
1793–1795 (Barcelona, 1913), 162–72.
2 Ossorio y Gallardo, 153.