Their
chief anxiety was lest the resistance should be too feeble to permit
them to glut themselves with blood. The creatures of caste, the
emigrants could not conceive of man as a variable animal, or of the
birth of a race of warriors under their eyes. To them human nature
remained constant. Such, they believed, was the immutable will of God.
So it came to pass that, as the Revolution took its shape, a vast
combination among the antique species came semi-automatically into
existence, pledged to envelop and strangle the rising type of man, a
combination, however, which only attained to maturity in 1793, after
the execution of the King. Leopold II, Emperor of Germany, had hitherto
been the chief restraining influence, both at Pilnitz and at Paris,
through his correspondence with his sister, Marie Antoinette; but
Leopold died on March 1, 1792, and was succeeded by Francis II, a fervid
reactionist and an obedient son of the Church. Then caste fused
throughout Germany, and Prussia and Austria prepared for war. Rouerie
had returned to Brittany and only awaited the first decisive foreign
success to stab the Revolution in the back.
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