It was the first time that foreign powers, interfering in the concerns of a nation divided into parties, have thought proper to thrust wholly out of their councils, to postpone, to discountenance, to reject, and, in a manner, to disgrace, the party whom those powers came to support.  The single person of a king cannot be a party.  Woe to the king who is himself his party!  The royal party, with the king or his representatives at its head, is the royal cause.  Foreign powers have hitherto chosen to give to such wars as this the appearance of a civil contest, and not that of an hostile invasion.  When the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, sent aids to the chiefs of the League, they appeared as allies to that league, and to the imprisoned king (the Cardinal de Bourbon) which that league had set up.  When the Germans came to the aid of the Protestant princes, in the same series of civil wars, they came as allies.  When the English came to the aid of Henry the Fourth, they appeared as allies to that prince.  So did the French always, when they intermeddled in the affairs of Germany:  they came to aid a party there.  When the English and Dutch intermeddled in the succession of Spain, they appeared as allies to the Emperor, Charles the Sixth.  In short, the policy has been as uniform as its principles were obvious to an ordinary eye.

According to all the old principles of law and policy, a regency ought to have been appointed by the French princes of the blood, nobles, and parliaments, and then recognized by the combined powers.  Fundamental law and ancient usage, as well as the clear reason of the thing, have always ordained it during an imprisonment of the king of France:  as in the case of John, and of Francis the First.  A monarchy ought not to be left a moment without a representative having an interest in the succession.  The orders of the state ought also to have been recognized in those amongst whom alone they existed in freedom, that is, in the emigrants.

Thus, laying down a firm foundation on the recognition of the authorities of the kingdom of France, according to Nature and to its fundamental laws, and not according to the novel and inconsiderate principles of the usurpation which the united powers were come to extirpate, the king of Prussia and the Emperor, as allies of the ancient kingdom of France, would have proceeded with dignity, first, to free the monarch, if possible,—­if not, to secure the monarchy as principal in the design; and in order to avoid all risks to that great object, (the object of other ages than the present, and of other countries than that of France,) they would of course avoid proceeding with more haste or in a different manner than what the nature of such an object required.

Adopting this, the only rational system, the rational mode of proceeding upon it was to commence with an effective siege of Lisle, which the French generals must have seen taken before their faces, or be forced to fight.  A plentiful country of friends, from whence to draw supplies, would have been behind them; a plentiful country of enemies, from whence to force supplies, would have been before them.  Good towns were always within reach to deposit their hospitals and magazines.  The march from Lisle to Paris is through a less defensible country, and the distance is hardly so great as from Longwy to Paris.