Though it was well known to all intelligent men that the Prussian armies were marching to unite with the Austrian for the invasion of France, yet the king, in grossest violation of duty, had made no communication of the fact to the Legislative Assembly. All the great roads were crowded with priests, nobles, and their partisans, hastening to join the emigrants at Coblentz. Couriers were every where traversing Europe, from St. Petersburg to Rome, from Stockholm to Madrid, from Berlin to Naples, openly announcing the coalition of all Europe to crush the revolution in France, and declaring that the armies would move in such force that the French would not be able to resist them for a single month. The allies were not unwilling to have their plans known and even exaggerated, for some of them hoped that the terror of the threat might be sufficient to drive the French patriots to submission.[334] It was consequently proclaimed, not officially, but with great soundings of trumpets, that Spain was to indemnify herself for the war by taking possession of the four beautiful southern provinces of France which lean against the Pyrenees--Navarre, Roussillon, Languedoc, and Guienne. The King of Sardinia was to receive the provinces adjacent to his kingdom, whose romantic valleys penetrated the lower Alps--Dauphiny, Provence, Lyonnois, and Bretagne. The Stadtholder of Holland was to extend his sway over the Provinces of Flanders and Picardy. Austria was to grasp the provinces adjoining the Rhine--Alsace, Lorraine, Champagne. The Swiss were offered Franche Comte if they would join the coalition. And, finally, England was to regain her old possession of Normandy, and was to seize all the colonial possessions of France in the two Indies.[335] Though the British _government_ was at this time strongly in sympathy with the coalition, it did not venture openly to join the alliance, for the masses of the British _people_ were cordially with the French patriots and rejoiced in the establishment of constitutional liberty in France. These extravagant threats filled Europe. It was every where assumed that only a small minority of the French people were opposed to the Old Régime, and that the mass of the nation would at once arise and welcome the invading armies.