Carnot owed his success to two things--arbitrary control over promotion, and the cheapness of French lives. He could sacrifice as many men as he required to carry a point. An Austrian on the Sambre, 1,000 miles from home, was hard to replace. Any number of Frenchmen were within easy reach. Colonel Mack observed that whenever a combatant fell, France lost a man, but Austria lost a soldier. La Vendee had shown what could be done by men without organisation or the power of manoeuvring, by constant activity, exposure, and courage. Carnot taught his men to win by a rush many times repeated, and not to count their dead. The inferior commanders were quickly weeded out, sometimes with help from the executioner, and the ablest men were brought to the front. The chief army of all, the army of Sambre et Meuse, was commanded by Kleber, Moreau, Reynier, Marceau, and Ney. Better still, on the Rhine were Hoche, Desaix, and St. Cyr. Best of all, in the Apennines, the French were led by Bonaparte and Massena. All these armaments had scarcely begun when the victory of Neerwinden and the flight of Dumouriez brought the Austrians up to the Belgian frontier. Carnot was not discovered, the better men had not risen to command, the levy _en masse_ had not been thought of. The French could do nothing in the field while the Prince of Coburg, supported by the Dutch, and by an Anglo-Hanoverian army under the Duke of York, sat down before the fortresses. By the end of July Conde and Valenciennes had fallen, and the road to Paris was open to the victors. They might have reached the capital in overwhelming force by the middle of August. But the English coveted, not Paris but Dunkirk, and the Duke of York withdrew with 37,000 men and laid siege to it. Coburg turned aside in the opposite direction, to besiege Le Quesnoy. He proposed to conquer the fortified towns, one after another, according to Grenville's prescription, and then to join hands with the Prussians whom it was urgent to have with him when penetrating to the interior. The Prussians meanwhile had taken Mentz, the garrison, like that of Valenciennes, making a defence too short for their fame. But the Prussians remembered the invasion of the year before, and they were in no hurry. The allies, with conflicting interests and divided counsels, gave the enemy time. Some years later, when Napoleon had defeated the Piedmontese, and was waiting for them to send back the treaty he had dictated at Cherasco, duly signed, he grew excessively impatient at their delay. The Piedmontese officers were surprised at what seemed a want of self-restraint, and let him see it. His answer was, "I may often lose a battle, but I shall never lose a minute."