The overthrow of this immemorial house of freedom opened the eyes of the blindest enthusiast to the real character of the French aggressions. Even in the group of young English poets, Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Southey, who had clung till now to the dream of the Revolution, of a Europe freed and regenerated by the arms of the new republic, all belief in such a dream passed finally away. But the France of the Directory would have cared little for this alienation of the peoples, had it not been backed by the revived hostility of their kings. What England counted on in her efforts for a revival of the coalition was the resentment of Austria at the aggressions which the Directory had ever since the peace of Campo Formio been carrying on in Italy. In the opening of 1798 a French force entered Rome, set up a Roman republic, and carried off Pius VI. a prisoner to Siena; while the king of Sardinia was driven to admit French garrisons into his fortresses. Austria however was still too weak after her defeats to listen to Pitt's advances, had Pitt stood alone. But Russia was now about to take a new part in European affairs. Under Catharine the Second this power had availed itself of the war against France in the west to carry out its own projects of conquest in eastern Europe; and, as we have seen, Pitt had watched its advance at the opening of the Revolution with far greater dread than the movements in France. It was in fact the need which the two German states felt of balancing the Russian annexations in Poland by annexations of their own which had paralysed their armies on the Rhine and saved France at the moment of her greatest danger in 1793. It is probable that the Directory still counted on the persistence of Russia in a similar policy, and believed that Catharine would see in their attack on Egypt and the Turks only a fresh opportunity for conquests on the Danube. But the sudden greatness of France had warned Russia that its policy of selfishness had been carried too far. It had allowed the Republic to tower into supremacy over the Continent, and if once such a supremacy was firmly established it would prove a fatal obstacle to the Russian advance. France would again, as under the monarchy, aim at the restoration of Poland; she would again bar the way to Constantinople; and her action would be backed by the weight of all western Europe, which had been thrown into her scale by the policy of the very state she defied. To avert such a result it was necessary to restore that balance of the Continent by which France and the German powers held one another in check; and with a view to this restoration Russia suddenly declared itself an enemy of France. Catharine's successor, the Czar Paul, set aside the overtures of the Directory. A close alliance was formed with Austria, and while an Imperial army gathered on the Bavarian frontier Russian troops hurried to the west. [Sidenote: The Union with Ireland.]