The republic was threatened on all sides by the most warlike troops of Europe. It would soon have to face forty-five thousand Austro-Sardinians in the Alps; fifty thousand Spaniards on the Pyrenees; seventy thousand Austrians or Imperialists, reinforced by thirty-eight thousand English and Dutch troops, on the Lower Rhine and in Belgium; thirty-three thousand four hundred Austrians between the Meuse and the Moselle; a hundred and twelve thousand six hundred Prussians, Austrians and Imperialists on the Middle and Upper Rhine. In order to confront so many enemies, the convention decreed a levy of three hundred thousand men. This measure of external defence was accompanied by a party measure for the interior. At the moment the new battalions, about to quit Paris, presented themselves to the assembly, the Mountain demanded the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal to maintain the revolution at home, which the battalions were going to defend on the frontiers. This tribunal, composed of nine members, was to try without jury or appeal. The Girondists arose with all their power against so arbitrary and formidable an institution, but it was in vain; for they seemed to be favouring the enemies of the republic by rejecting a tribunal intended to punish them. All they obtained was the introduction of juries into it, the removal of some violent men, and the power of annulling its acts, as long as they maintained any influence. The principal efforts of the coalition were directed against the vast frontier extending from the north sea to Huninguen. The prince of Coburg, at the head of the Austrians, was to attack the French army on the Roër and the Meuse, to enter Belgium; while the Prussians, on the other point, should march against Custine, give him battle, surround Mayence, and after taking it, renew the preceding invasion. These two armies of operation were sustained in the intermediate position by considerable forces. Dumouriez, engrossed by ambitious and reactionary designs, at a moment when he ought only to have thought of the perils of France, proposed to himself to re-establish the monarchy of 1791, in spite of the convention and Europe. What Bouillé could not do for an absolute, nor Lafayette for a constitutional throne, Dumouriez, at a less propitious time, hoped alone to carry through in the interest of a destroyed constitution and a monarchy without a party. Instead of remaining neutral among factions, as circumstances dictated to a general, and even to an ambitious man, Dumouriez preferred a rupture, in order to sway them. He conceived a design of forming a party out of France; of entering Holland by means of the Dutch republicans opposed to the stadtholdership, and to English influence; to deliver Belgium from the Jacobins; to unite these countries in a single independent state, and secure for himself their political protectorate after having acquired all the glory of a conqueror. To