The negotiators were moved almost to tears, and promised to communicate these impressions to their sovereigns, and gave Mallet-Dupan the assurance that the intentions of the king should be the measure of the language which the manifesto of the coalition would address to the French nation.

They did not however dissimulate their astonishment at the fact that the language of the emigrant princes at Coblentz was so opposed to the views of the king at Paris.  “They openly manifest,” said they, “the intention of re-conquering the kingdom for the counter-revolution, of rendering themselves independent, of dethroning their brother and proclaiming a regency.”  The confidant of Louis XVI. left for Geneva after this conference; whilst the emperor, the king of Prussia, the principal princes of the confederation, the ministers, the generals, and the Duke of Brunswick went to Mayence.  Mayence, where the fetes were interrupted by the councils, became for some days the head-quarters of the monarchs, and there, at the instigation of the emigres, extreme resolutions were adopted.  It was resolved to combat a revolution that but increased in proportion as it received indulgence.  The supplications of Louis XVI., and the warnings of Dupan were forgotten, and the plan of the campaign was fixed.

XVII.

The emperor was to have the supreme control of the war in Belgium, where his army was to be commanded by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen.  Fifteen thousand men were to cover the right of the Prussians, and affect a junction with them at Longwy.  Twenty thousand more of the emperor’s troops, commanded by the Prince de Hohenlohe, were to establish themselves between the Rhine and the Moselle, cover the Prussian left, and operate upon Landau, Sarrelouis, and Thionville.  A third corps, under Prince Esterhazy, and strengthened by five thousand emigres under the Prince de Conde, would threaten the frontiers from Switzerland to Philipsbourg, and the king of Sardinia would have an army of observation on the Var and the Isere.  These dispositions made, it was resolved to reply to terror by terror, and to publish in the name of the generalissimo the Duke of Brunswick, a manifesto, which would leave the French revolution no other alternative than submission or death.

M. de Calonne proposed it, and the Marquis de Limon, formerly intendant des finances to the Duke of Orleans, first an ardent revolutionist like his master, then an emigre and an implacable royalist, wrote the manifesto and submitted it to the emperor, who in his turn submitted it to the king of Prussia.  The king of Prussia sent it to the Duke of Brunswick, who murmured, and demanded a modification of some of the expressions, which was accorded.  The Marquis de Limon, however, supported by the French princes, again restored the text.  The Duke of Brunswick became indignant, and tore the manifesto to pieces, without however daring to disavow it, and the manifesto appeared, with all its insults and threats, to the French nation.