Again, in the Seven Years' War, when the French neglected to secure their foothold in Germany, by placing in a state of defence the fortifications that fell into their power, the first defeat rendered their ground untenable, and threw them from the Elbe back upon the Rhine and the Mayne. They afterwards took the precaution to fortify their positions, and to secure their magazines under shelter of strong places, and, consequently, were enabled to maintain themselves in the hostile country till the end of the war, notwithstanding the inefficiency of their generals, the great reverses they sustained in the field, the skill and perseverance of the enemy they were contending with, and the weak and vacillating character of the cabinet that directed them. But this system of defence was not so carefully maintained in the latter part of the eighteenth century, for at the beginning of the French Revolution, says Jomini, "Germany had too few fortifications; they were generally of a poor character, and improperly located." France, on the contrary, was well fortified: and although without armies, and torn in pieces by domestic factions, (we here use the language of the Archduke,) "she sustained herself against all Europe; _and this was because her government, since the reign of Louis XIII_., _had continually labored to put her frontiers into a defensive condition agreeably to the principles of strategy_; starting from such a system for a basis, she subdued every country on the continent that was not thus fortified; and this reason alone will explain how her generals sometimes succeeded in destroying an army, and even an entire state, merely by a strategic success." This may be illustrated by reference to particular campaigns. In 1792, when the Duke of Brunswick invaded France, she had no armies competent to her defence. Their numbers upon paper were somewhat formidable, it is true, but the license of the Revolution had so loosened the bonds of discipline as to effect an almost complete disorganization. "It seemed, at this period," says the historian, "as if the operations of the French generals were dependent upon the absence of their enemies: the moment they appeared, the operations were precipitately abandoned." But France had on her eastern frontier a triple line of good fortresses, although her miserable soldiery were incapable of properly defending them. The several works of the first and second lines fell, one after another, before the slow operations of a Prussian siege, and the Duke of Brunswick was already advancing upon the third, when Dumourier, with only twenty-five thousand men, threw himself into this line, and by a well-conducted war of positions, placing his raw and unsteady forces behind unassailable intrenchments, succeeded in repelling a disciplined army nearly four times as numerous as his own. Had no other obstacle than the French troops been interposed between Paris and the Prussians, all agree that France must have fallen.