All the cabinets of the princes threatened by the Revolution still debated the question of peace or war. It was discussed alike in the councils of Louis XVI., in the meetings of parties in the Assembly, at the Jacobins, and in the public journals. The moment was decisive, for it was evident that the negotiation between the emperor Leopold and France on the subject of the reception of emigrants in the states dependent on the empire was fast drawing to a close, and that before long the emperor would have given satisfaction to France by dispersing these bodies of emigres, or that France would declare war against him, and by this declaration draw on herself the hostilities of all her enemies at the same time. France thus would defy them all. We have already seen that the Statesmen, and Revolutionists, Constitutionalists, and Girondists, Aristocrats, and Jacobins, were all in favour of war. War was, in the eyes of all, an appeal to destiny, and the impatient spirit of France wished that it would pronounce at once, either by victory or defeat. Victory seemed to France the sole issue by which she could extricate herself from her difficulties at home, and even defeat did not terrify her. She believed in the necessity of war, and defied even death. Robespierre thought otherwise, and it is for that reason that he was Robespierre. He clearly comprehended two things; the first, that war was a gratuitous crime against the people; the second, that a war, even though successful, would ruin the cause of democracy. Robespierre looked on the Revolution as the rigorous application of the principles of philosophy to society. A passionate and devoted pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, the _Contrat Social_ was his gospel; war, made with the blood of the people, was in the eyes of this philosopher--what it must ever be in the eyes of the wise--wholesale slaughter to gratify the ambition of a few, glorious only when it is defensive. Robespierre did not consider France placed in such a position as to render it absolutely necessary for her safety that the human vein should be opened, whence would flow such torrents of blood. Embued with a firm conviction of the omnipotence of the new ideas on which he nourished faith and fanaticism within a heart closed against intrigue, he did not fear that a few fugitive princes, destitute of credit, and some thousand aristocratic emigres, would impose laws or conditions on a nation whose first struggle for liberty had shaken the throne, the nobility, and the clergy. Neither did he think that the disunited and wavering powers of Europe would venture to declare war against a nation that proclaimed peace so long as we did not attack them. But should the European cabinets be sufficiently mad to attempt this new crusade against human reason, then Robespierre fully believed they would be defeated, for he knew that there lies invincible force in, the justice of a cause--that right doubles the energy of a nation, that