When you estimate the numbers that compose the French armies, you are not to consider them as an undisciplined multitude, whose sole force is in their numbers.  From the beginning of the revolution, many of them have been exercised in the National Guard; and though they might not make a figure on the parade at Potsdam, their inferiority is not so great as to render the German exactitude a counterbalance for the substantial inequality of numbers.  Yet, powerfully as these considerations favour the military triumphs of France, there is a period when we may expect both cause and effect will terminate.  That period may still be far removed, but whenever the assignats* become totally discredited, and it shall be found requisite to economize in the war department, adieu la gloire, a bas les armes, and perhaps bon soir la republique; for I do not reckon it possible, that armies so constituted can ever be persuaded to subject themselves to the restraints and privations which must be indispensible, as soon as the government ceases to have the disposal of an unlimited fund.

* The mandats were, in fact, but a continuation of the assignats, under another name.  The last decree for the emission of assignats, limited the quantity circulated to forty milliards, which taken at par, is only about sixteen hundred millions of pounds sterling!

What I have hitherto written you will understand as applicable only to the troops employed on the frontiers.  There are some of another description, more cherished and not less serviceable, who act as a sort of police militant and errant, and defend the republic against her internal enemies—­the republicans.  Almost every town of importance is occasionally infested by these servile instruments of despotism, who are maintained in insolent profusion, to overawe those whom misery and famine might tempt to revolt.  When a government, after imprisoning some hundred thousands of the most distinguished in every class of life, and disarming all the rest, is yet obliged to employ such a force for its protection, we may justifiably conclude, it does not presume on the attachment of the people.  It is not impossible that the agents of different descriptions, destined to the service of conciliating the interior to republicanism, might alone form an army equal to that of the Allies; but this is a task, where the numbers employed only serve to render it more difficult.  They, however, procure submission, if they do not create affection; and the Convention is not delicate.

Amiens, Sept. 30, 1794.

The domestic politics of France are replete with novelties:  the Convention is at war with the Jacobins—­and the people, even to the most decided aristocrats, have become partizans of the Convention.—­My last letters have explained the origin of these phaenomena, and I will now add a few words on their progress.