The total forces at the disposal of the French crown--and it must be remembered that the crown, not the parliament, was still master of the armies--were, along the whole frontier from the Alps to the sea, a trifle over 80,000 men. They were arranged in three armies. When war was declared in the following April, all three, the army of the north, that of the centre, and that of the Rhine, were each under the command of a general who would certainly defend the monarchy against the revolutionary spirit which had its centre in the populace of Paris. The smallest army, that of the centre, a force of somewhat less than 20,000 men, was under the direct command of Lafayette, _but he was also the chief of the three commanders_. At this moment therefore he is the pivot upon which everything turns; nor is it possible to grasp the nature of what follows save through an appreciation of how Lafayette broke down. Two-thirds of the regimental officers had emigrated, certain of the cavalry regiments had crossed the frontier in a body; even the artillery had suffered the loss of one-third of its commissioned ranks in this fashion. The forces were not homogeneous, the numerous volunteers among them were an element of weakness and disorder, the discipline was deplorable and daily weakening. It was a general opinion throughout Europe that the French line could not perform its task, and the first weak attempts of the army of the north to invade the enemy’s territory in what is now Belgium, and was then the Austrian Netherlands, resulted in a miserable rout and a disgraceful and murderous mutiny. The Prussian and the Austrian forces were slowly gathering for an invasion. That the crown, still in command of those ill-equipped regiments and guns, desired the success of the invasion was morally certain to the populace of Paris; and the populace of Paris was right. The king was manifestly party to a moral compact with the enemy, his chief city was already holding him answerable for treason, when, in June, long before the invading army had reached the frontier, but when the terror of it was already rising high in the masses of the capital, Lafayette moved. His move was in favour of the king. His army was the smallest of the three, but the best provided; what was more important in the temper of that moment, it was really attached to its chief; for though Lafayette was prepared to defend the king against Paris, yet the king had a traditional value in the soldiers’ eyes which Paris had not gained, and they knew that, in the midst of much intrigue the general’s character had nothing in it at all of intrigue; he was known and still approved by his soldiery. Lastly, and most important, he was, as we have seen, superior over the other generals in command. In reply to the growing menace of the populace in Paris the king dismissed his liberal ministers. The parliament declared that they carried with them the regrets of the nation.