Meanwhile, through the energy of Carnot, reinforcements had been found for the French army of the Rhine, which, after a fortnight’s hard fighting on the heights about Kaiserslautern, forced Möllendorf to retire under the cannon of Mainz with a loss of two thousand men and sixteen guns. The Austrian troops on the Rhine thereupon withdrew from the left bank of the river; and the miscarriage of a plan, concerted a fortnight later for recovery of the lost ground, set the Generals of the two nations quarrelling more bitterly than ever. ◆July 28.◆ The end of July brought yet another stroke of good luck to France in the overthrow of Robespierre and the execution of himself, St. Just, and other of his principal colleagues. Robespierre’s latest achievement as a military administrator had been to decree that no quarter should be shown to British or Hanoverians in the field, an order which was disobeyed by the French troops and laughed at by the British. The supreme imbecility, apart from all other faults, of his rule had brought France to the last stage of exhaustion; and, indeed, if the Allies had succeeded in keeping the French armies out of Belgium, the latter must have perished of starvation.[263] Robespierre’s death marked the close of the Terror and the beginning of a return to common sense in the matter of administration. The man, however, had lived long enough to waste the energies of the armies of the North in the recovery of the four captured fortresses in the frontier, when they should have been scattering the Allies to the four winds; and thus it came about that the Duke of York enjoyed a few weeks’ respite for the formation of new plans.