The decisive success of the moderate party was not without its effect upon European politics. At the time of the insurrection of Prairial, the French arms were completely victorious and many had begun to hope for the cessation of the war. The history of the revolutionary armies is the finest part of the French Revolution. There the spirit which the Revolution had inspired, and which had spent itself so fruitlessly in Paris, was seen at its best in the enthusiasm, the devotion and the gallantry of the troops. There too the high qualities of the Jacobin administrators appeared, their determined patriotism, their dauntless vigour and resource. There the Government which in Paris seemed to be only a Government of tyrants, revealed itself as a Government of heroes. There the politicians and intriguers of the Terror turned to the nobler work of national defence. Carnot and St. Just, Merlin of Thionville, Rewbell and Barras, Milhaud and Soubrany, Richard, Drouet, Cavaignac and Fabre d'Hérault are only some among the many brave men who, as Representatives on Mission with the armies, inspired the French troops with their own lofty courage, and both by precept and example taught them the impossibility of defeat. The enthusiasm which political intrigues had wasted found a deeper expression in the war, and the levelling freedom of the Republic threw open to all ranks alike the prospects of a great career. In the campaigns of 1793-94, Hoche, Pichegru and Jourdan had already reached the highest place, and Moreau and Kléber, Bernadotte, Ney, Davoût, Augereau and Victor, Soult, Masséna, Bonaparte were winning their way to notice and command. It is true that at the first the French levies were ill-organised and ill-disciplined, and that their earlier successes were due chiefly to the disunion or incapacity of their opponents. But the progress of the war and the vigorous measures of the Jacobin Government soon produced a remarkable change. There was no lack of material upon which to draw. To the old royal army there had in turn been added the battalions of national guards, the volunteers raised in 1792, the _levée en masse_ of the same year, which was, however, of very little use, the levy of 300,000 men formed, largely by conscription, in the spring of 1793, and the forces raised in the following summer by the imperious decrees of the Government, which claimed the services of all men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. On this material the Convention set to work, and the efforts of Dubois-Crancé and Carnot, seconded by their able advisers, and perfected by the strenuous action and wide powers of the great Committee, met with complete success. To Dubois-Crancé especially belongs the credit. It was he who, in the winter of 1793-94, at last carried through the Convention the great scheme for the reorganisation of the army which he had advocated so long, who committed the Government to the principle of conscription and to the