[Law of the Maximum] The price of corn and other necessaries was fixed; and, when the traders and producers consequently ceased to bring their goods to market, the Commissioners of the Convention were empowered to make requisition of a certain quantity of corn for every acre of ground. Property was thus placed at the disposal of the men who already exercised absolute political power. "The state of France," said Burke, "is perfectly simple. It consists of but two descriptions, the oppressors and the oppressed." It is in vain that the attempt has been made to extenuate the atrocious and senseless cruelties of this time by extolling the great legislative projects of the Convention, or pleading the dire necessity of a land attacked on every side by the foreigner, and rent with civil war. The more that is known of the Reign of Terror, the more hateful, the meaner and more disgusting is the picture unveiled. France was saved not by the brutalities, but by the energy, of the faction that ruled it. It is scarcely too much to say that the cause of European progress would have been less injured by the military overthrow of the Republic, by the severance of the border provinces from France and the restoration of some shadow of the ancient _régime_, than by the traditions of horror which for the next fifty years were inseparably associated in men's minds with the victory of the people over established power. [French disasters, March-Sept., 1793.] The Revolutionary organisation did not reach its full vigour till the autumn of 1793, when the prospects of France were at their worst. Custine, who was brought up from Alsace to take command of the Army of the North, found it so demoralised that he was unable to attempt the relief of the fortresses which were now besieged by the Allies. Condé surrendered to the Austrians on the 10th of July; Valenciennes capitulated to the Duke of York a fortnight later. In the east the fortune of war was no better. An attack made on the Prussian army besieging Mainz totally failed; and on the 23rd of July this great fortress, which had been besieged since the middle of April, passed back into the hands of the Germans. On every side the Republic seemed to be sinking before its enemies. Its frontier defences had fallen before the victorious Austrians and English; Brunswick was ready to advance upon Alsace from conquered Mainz; Lyons and Toulon were in revolt; La Vendée had proved the grave of the forces sent to subdue it. It was in this crisis of misfortune that the Convention placed the entire male population of France between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five at the disposal of the Government, and turned the whole country into one great camp and arsenal of war. Nor was there wanting a mind equal to the task of giving order to this vast material. The appointment of Carnot, an officer of engineers, to a seat on the Committee of Public Safety placed the military administration of France in the hands of a man who, as an