The Flight to Varennes

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1892 edition. Excerpt: ...From a narrower point of view, it formed a turning point in the career of Pitt. Up to that time he had pursued a policy of peace, retrenchment, and reform. The most enlightened minister of his age, he promised fair to anticipate by fifty years some of the most important changes which our own age has witnessed. From that period, he was the minister of war, extravagance and coercion. His name was a synonym for blood, violence, and treachery, not only upon the Continent, but among English Liberals. The war then kindled was not extinguished until it had killed him in its course. His friends saw the Austerlitz look on the blanched countenance of their dying chief. Passing a map of Europe in his last days, he said, Roll up that map, we shall not want it any more. The character of our conduct in that crisis has long been disputed amongst politicians. War was opposed in 1793 by Fox and the Liberal party who followed him, and he lost no opportunity of urging the desirability of peace. However, when he became Foreign Minister after the death of Pitt, he did not make peace. In 1853, after the death of the Duke of Wellington, the question was argued by Richard Cobden. In his pamphlet, 1793 and 1853, he tries to show that our war with France was neither necessary nor just. His arguments are those of a partisan, and the authorities which he recommends to his reverend correspondent, and on which he probably relied himself, are such ordinary books as the Annual Register, the Pictorial History of England, Alison's History of Europe, and the Parliamentary Debates. The present writer has had the opportunity of reading nearly all the dispatches in the English Record Office and the French Foreign Office which bear upon the...