A conference of the foreign powers was held on the 20th of May, 1791, at Mantua, in Italy, where Leopold, Emperor of Austria, and brother of Marie Antoinette, then chanced to be. At this conference Count d'Artois appeared in behalf of the emigrants. Prussia was represented by Major Bischofverder, England by Lord Elgin, and Louis XVI. by the Count de Durfort. Several other of the kingdoms and principalities of Europe were represented on the occasion. The Count de Durfort returned from this conference to Louis XVI. in Paris, and brought him the following secret declaration in the name of the Emperor Leopold:[270] Austria engaged to assemble thirty-five thousand men on the frontiers of Flanders. At the same time fifteen thousand men from the smaller German States would attack Alsace. Fifteen thousand Swiss troops were to be marched on Lyons, and the King of Sardinia, whose daughter the Count d'Artois had married, was to assail Dauphiné. The king of Spain, cousin of Louis XVI., was to gather twenty thousand troops upon the slopes of the Pyrenees, to fall like an avalanche down upon southern France. Prussia engaged to co-operate cordially. The King of England, notwithstanding the eloquence of Burke's pamphlet, could not yet venture to call upon the liberty-loving English to engage in this infamous crusade against the independence and the liberty of a sister kingdom. But the king, as Elector of Hanover, engaged to take an active part in the war. A protest against the Revolution was to be drawn up in the name of the whole house of Bourbon, whose _divine right_ to despotism in France had been questioned by the French people, and this protest was to be signed by those branches of the Bourbons who were occupying the thrones of Spain, Naples, and Parma.[271] Plans for the invasion having been thus arranged, Louis XVI. resolved immediately to effect his escape to the frontier. He could then place himself at the head of these foreign armies, and lash France into obedience, and consign those patriots who had been toiling for liberty to the dungeon and the scaffold. Never was the condition of a nation more full of peril, or apparently more hopeless. This impending destruction was enough to drive any people into the madness of despair. It is hard to wear the fetters of bondage even when one has never known any thing better. But, after having once broken those chains and tasted the sweets of liberty, then to have the shackles riveted anew is what few human spirits can endure.