386 Chapter XVI
Given the fact of war, each of the belligerents looked for sympathizers within its
enemy’s territory. Thus each expected to weaken its adversary. The Allies found
their natural friends in France among the more intense royalists and political
Catholics. The French enjoyed the favor of persons already discontented with con-
ditions in their own countries. Sometimes these internally alienated groups ac-
tively collaborated with the enemies of their governments, as when royalists in
France conspired with foreign agents for the invasion of France, or when Dutch
democrats, before 1795, entered into understandings with the French for the inva-
sion of Holland. More often it was not by such “treason” (a term always relative to
accepted legality) that these internal divisions made themselves felt, so much as by
apathy or uncooperativeness with the demands of governments. The war against
France was not popular among the burghers of Berlin. Many middle- class people
in Vienna, as in Paris, disliked the Emperor’s Declaration of Pillnitz in 1791, and
showed no enthusiasm for the war in 1792. When Britain and Holland became
involved in the war in 1793, the anti- war feeling in both countries was very strong.
In France, so far as the war was expected really to defeat the enemy, the royalists,
clericals, and other conservatives had the least interest in its vigorous prosecution.
Hence, again given the war as a fact, and independently of original wish or in-
tention, each government made ringing appeals to those of its own subjects who
were already inclined to support it. Each government indeed became more depen-
dent than ever on those classes of the population to which it owed its strength. The
class complexion of the regime in each country was accentuated. Each government
touted and publicized the advantages of the constitution and way of life which it
presumably defended. The Hapsburg government, to carry on the war, had increas-
ingly to agree with the landlord and noble interests which it had itself so stoutly
resisted in the days of Joseph II. In Germany, the Academy of Erfurt, as already
mentioned, hoped to teach the people the peculiar advantages of the Vaterländische
Verfassung, or “national constitution”; even though no one quite knew what it was,
it must be worth fighting for when one was fighting the French. In England the
spokesmen of government, to justify the war and recruit support, became more
emphatic than ever in praise of the glories of the British Constitution, by which
the existing peculiarities of Lords and Commons were principally to be under-
stood. In liberal language, “reform” became impossible; it had, of course, been
equally impossible before the war.
This self- praise in each country of its own institutions is not to be taken as a
sign of national solidarity. It is evidence rather of internal division and an attempt
at persuasion. The secure and the confident do not need such reminders of their
own worth. In France, under stress of war, the government, or groups of men who
in the turmoil of revolution were attempting to function as a government, tried to
appeal to the mass of the population to sustain the military effort. Former nobles,
aristocrats, Rome- minded clergy, and people of inherited wealth or position being
in these circumstances the least reliable, the government made concession after
concession to the more numerous and popular ranks who must man its armies. The
leaders of Revolution became dependent on the most committed, most intense,
and most activist revolutionaries. They had also to persuade the masses that the
Revolution was to their advantage. In this sense, as will be seen in more detail,