With the fall of De Lessart, all chance of peace vanished; as indeed it had been gradually disappearing before that event. The demands of the Austrian court went now, when fully explained, so far back upon the Revolution, that a peace negotiated upon such terms, must have laid France and all its various parties, (with the exception perhaps of a few of the first Assembly,) at the foot of the sovereign, and, what might be more dangerous, at the mercy of the restored emigrants. The Emperor demanded the establishment of monarchy in France, on the basis of the royal declaration of 23d June, 1789, which had been generally rejected by the Tiers Etat when offered to them by the King. He farther demanded the restoration of the effects of the Church, and that the German princes having rights in Alsace and Lorraine should be replaced in those rights, agreeably to the treaty of Westphalia. The Legislative Assembly received these extravagant terms as an insult on the national dignity; and the King, whatever might be his sentiments as an individual, could not, on this occasion, dispense with the duty his office as Constitutional Monarch imposed upon him. Louis, therefore, had the melancholy task [April 20] of proposing to an Assembly, filled with the enemies of his throne and person, a declaration of war against his brother-in-law the Emperor, in his capacity of King of Hungary and Bohemia,[190] involving, as matter of course, a civil war with his own two brothers, who had taken the field at the head of that part of his subjects from birth and principle the most enthusiastically devoted to their sovereign's person, and who, if they had faults towards France, had committed them in love to him.[191] The proposal was speedily agreed to by the Assembly; for the Constitutionalists saw their best remaining chance for power was by obtaining victory on the frontiers,--the Girondists had need of war, as what must necessarily lead the way to an alteration in the constitution, and the laying aside the regal government,--and the Jacobins, whose chief, Robespierre, had just objected enough to give him the character and credit of a prophet if any reverses were sustained, resisted the war no longer, but remained armed and watchful, to secure the advantage of events as they might occur. FOOTNOTES: [159] Mignet, tom. i., p. 141; Dumont, p. 244. [160] "One evening M. de Narbonne made use of this expression: 'I appeal to the most distinguished members of this Assembly.' At that moment the whole party of the Mountain rose up in a fury, and Merlin, Bazire, and Chabot, declared, that 'all the deputies were equally distinguished.'"--M. DE STAËL, tom. ii., p. 39. [161] Cazalès, one of the most brilliant orators of the Assembly, was born at Grenade-sur-la-Garonne in 1752. He died in 1805. In 1821, _Les Discours et Opinions de Cazalès_ were published at Paris, in an octavo volume.