Lectures on the French Revolution Part 11

Leopold II. was one of the shrewdest and most cautious of men. He knew how to wait, and how to give way. He had no wish that his brother-in-law should again be powerful, and he was not sorry that France should be disabled by civil dissension. But he could not abandon his sister without dishonour; and he was afraid of the contagion of French principles in Belgium, which he had reconciled and pacified with difficulty. Moreover, a common action in French affairs, action which might eventually be warlike, was a means of closing the long enmity with Prussia, and obtaining a subst.i.tute for the family alliance with France, which had become futile. Therefore he was prepared, if they had escaped, to risk war for their restoration, and induced the Prussian agent to sign an undertaking which went beyond his instructions.

When the disastrous news reached him from Varennes, Leopold appealed to the Powers, drew up an alliance with Prussia, and joined in the declaration of Pilnitz, by which France was threatened with the combined action of all Europe unless the king was restored to a position worthy of kings. The threat implied no danger, because it was made conditional on the unanimity of the Powers. There was one Power that was sure not to consent. England was waiting an opportunity to profit by French troubles. It had already been seriously proposed by Bouille, with the approval of Lewis, to purchase aid from George III.

by the surrender of all the colonies of France. Therefore Leopold thought that he risked nothing by a demonstration which the _emigres_ made the most of to alarm and irritate the French people. But when the king freely accepted the Const.i.tution, the manifesto of Pilnitz fell to the ground. If he was content with his position, it could not be the duty of the Powers to waste blood and treasure in attempting to alter it. The best thing was that things should settle down in France.

Then there would be no excitement spreading to Belgium, and no reason why other princes should be less easily satisfied than Lewis himself.

"The king," said Kaunitz, "the king, good man, has helped us out of our difficulty himself." Still more, when he obtained a revival of popularity which seemed a marvel after the events of June, when he freely vetoed acts which he disapproved, and appeared to be acting in full agreement with a powerful and still dominant party, the imperial government hoped that the crisis was over. And this was the state of things in October and November.

The _emigres_, conscious of their repulse at Pilnitz, made it their business to undeceive the emperor, and to bring him back to the scheme of intervention. The Spanish Bourbons were with them, and had recalled their amba.s.sador, and fitted out a fleet in the Mediterranean.

Gustavus of Sweden was eager to invade France with a Swedish army to be conveyed in Russian ships, and paid for in Mexican piastres, and with Bouille by his side. Catherine II. gave every encouragement to the German Powers to embroil themselves with France, and to leave her to deal uncontrolled with Poland and Turkey. The first to emigrate had been the Comte d'Artois and his friends, who had conspired against Necker and the new Const.i.tution. They fled, because their lives were in danger. Others followed, after the rising of the peasants and the spoliation of August. As things grew more acute, and the settlement of feudal claims was carried out with unsparing hostility, the movement spread to the inferior _n.o.blesse_. After the breach with the clergy and the secularisation of Church property, the prelates went into exile, and were followed by their friends. In the winter of 1790-1791 they began to organise themselves on the Rhine, and to negotiate with some of the smaller Powers, especially Sardinia, for an invasion. The later arrivals were not welcomed, for they were men who had accepted const.i.tutional government. The purpose of the true _emigres_ was the restoration of the old order, of the ancient principles and inst.i.tutions, not without reform, but without subversion. That was the bond between them, and the basis on which they sought the aid of absolute princes. They denied that the king himself, writhing in the grip of democracy, had the right to alter the fundamental laws. Some of the best and ablest and most honourable men had joined their ranks, and they were instructed and inflamed by the greatest writer in the world, who had been the best of Liberals and the purest of revolutionary statesmen, Edmund Burke. It was not as a reactionist, but as a Whig who had drunk success to Washington, who had dressed in blue and buff, who had rejoiced over the British surrender at Saratoga, who had drawn up the address to the Colonists, which is the best State paper in the language, that he told them that it was lawful to invade their own country, and to shed the blood of their countrymen.

The _emigres_ of every grade of opinion were united in dislike of the queen and in depreciation of the king, and they wished to supersede him by declaring his brother Regent. They hoped to save them both; but they thought more of principles than of persons, and were not to be diverted from their projects by consideration of what might happen at Paris. When the emperor spoke of the danger his sister and her husband were running, Castelnau replied, "What does it matter, provided the royal authority is preserved in the person of d'Artois?" They not only refused obedience to Lewis, but they a.s.siduously compromised him, and proclaimed that he meant the contrary of what he said, making a reconciliation between him and his people impossible. Even his brothers defied him when in this extremity, he entreated them to return. It was the _emigre_ policy to magnify the significance of what was done at Pilnitz; and as they have convinced posterity that it was the announcement of an intended attack, it was easy to convince their contemporaries at home. The language of menace was there, and France believed itself in danger. How little the Princes concerned meant to give effect to it remained a secret.

The French democracy might have found its advantage in the disappearance of so many n.o.bles; but as they were working, with apparent effect, to embroil the country with its neighbours, attempts were made to compel their return, first by a threefold taxation, then by confiscation, and at last, November 9, by threatening with death those who did not return. The nonjuring clergy were a.s.sociated with the _emigres_ in the public mind as enemies and conspirators who were the more dangerous because they remained at home. The First a.s.sembly had provoked the hostility on the frontier; the Second provoked hostilities at home. The First had left nonjuring priests with a pension, and the use of parish churches where successors had not been appointed. The Legislative a.s.sembly decreed, November 29, that in all cases where it seemed good to the authorities, they might be deprived of their pensions and sent away. The great insurrection of the West was caused by this policy. It was religious rather than political, and was appeased by the return of the priests.

The head of the war party in the a.s.sembly was Brissot, who was reputed to know foreign countries, and who promised certain success, as no really formidable Power was ready to take the field. Meantime he endeavoured to isolate Austria, and Segur was sent to Berlin, Talleyrand to London, to surround France with her natural allies.

Brissot's text was the weakness and division of other countries; the first man who divined the prodigious resources and invincible energy of France was the declamatory Provencal Isnard. He spoke on November 29, and this was his prophetic argument: the French people exhibited the highest qualities in war when they were treated as slaves by despotic masters; there was no fear that they had degenerated in becoming free men; only let them fight for principle, not for State policy, and the force that was in them would transform the world.

Herault de Sech.e.l.les divulged the political motive of the war party.

He said a foreign conflict would be desirable for internal reasons. It would lead to measures of precaution stronger than peace time would admit, and changes otherwise impossible would then be justified by the plea of public safety. It is the first shadow cast by the coming reign of terror. But neither Girondin violence nor _emigre_ intrigue was the cause that plunged France into the war that was to be the most dreadful of all wars. The true cause was the determination of Marie Antoinette not to submit to the new Const.i.tution. At first she wished that France should be intimidated by a congress of the united Powers.

She warned her friends abroad not to be taken in by the mockery of her understanding with the Feuillant statesmen; and when Leopold treated the accepted Const.i.tution seriously, as a release from his engagements, she accused him of betraying her. On September 8, just before accepting, Lewis, in confidence, wrote that he meant to tolerate no authority in France besides his own, and that he desired to recover it by foreign aid.

The idea of an armed Congress persisted until the end of November. But during the week from the 3rd to the 10th of December the king and queen wrote to the Powers, desiring them not to regard their official acts, beseeching them to resist the demands they made in public and to make war, and a.s.suring them that France would be easily subdued and cowed. They hoped, by this treason, to recover their undivided power.

All these letters were inspired, were almost dictated, by Fersen.

As Leopold began to see more clearly what it was his sister meant, he modified his pacific policy. On the 25th of October he speaks of increasing the royal authority by a counter-revolution in France. On the 17th of November he invites Prussia to help him with 20,000 men.

On the 10th of December he denounces the annexation by France of the German domains in Alsace. In conformity with this gradual change, Kaunitz became more rigid, and he made known that any a.s.sault on the Elector of Treves, for the protection he gave to the warlike _emigres_, would be resisted by the imperial forces. Each step was as short as possible. The transition from peace to war, from pointless remonstrance to vigorous defiance, was slow and gradual. It began late in October, when the real meaning of the acceptance of the Const.i.tution became known, but down to the month of January the change was not decisive, and the tone was still ambiguous. On the 3rd of January a letter from the queen at length carried the emperor over. On the way this appeal had converted Mercy, and Mercy, on January 7, wrote a letter which compelled Kaunitz to give way. Kaunitz had grown grey in the idea of the French alliance and of rivalry with Prussia.

He laughed at Mr. Burke and the theory of contagion. He desired to perpetuate a state of things which paralyzed France, by the rivalry between the king and the democracy. To restore the king's power at home was to increase it abroad. Kaunitz was willing that it should be kept in check by the legislature; but a moment came when he perceived that the progress of the opposition, of the Jacobins as men indiscriminately called them, more properly of the Girondins, had transferred the centre of gravity. What had been cast down in the Monarch rose again in the Second a.s.sembly, and the power of the nation, the nation united with its representatives, began to appear.

Kaunitz, though he had no eye for such things, took alarm at last, and resolved that the way to depress France was to a.s.sist the king of France. On January 5, after the queen's letter of December 16 had been received, he declared that Austria would support the elector of Treves, and would repel force by force, if he was attacked for the harbouring of _emigres_. At the same moment Leopold resolved on an offensive alliance with Prussia. He explained his change of policy by the letters which showed him the true mind of the queen. On January 16 Kaunitz still believed that the other Powers would refuse to co-operate. But Prussia was willing to accept the new alliance, if Austria abandoned the new Polish Const.i.tution of May 3. Leopold paid the stipulated price. On February 7 he gave up the Poles, that he might be strong against France. Already, January 25, Kaunitz had taken the deciding step, pa.s.sing over from the defensive to attack. He speaks no more of the king's liberty of action. He demands rest.i.tution of the papal territory at Avignon, annexed in consequence of the Pope's action against the ecclesiastical laws. He requires that the German princes shall have their Alsatian domains given back to them, and that there shall be no trespa.s.s on the imperial dominions. And in general terms he requires the restoration of monarchy. Again he wrote, in the same warlike and defiant spirit, on February 17, when the Prussian signature had been received, and when he expected English aid for the preservation of Belgium. Meantime Simolin, the Russian minister who had been helpful in procuring the fatal pa.s.sport, arrived at Vienna with a last appeal from the queen. At that time she did not feel that their lives were in jeopardy, but their power. To the faithful Fersen she wrote that she hoped the enemy would strike home, so that the French, in their terror, might pray the king to intercede.

Kaunitz, having despatched his ultimatum on the international grounds of quarrel, declined to interfere in internal affairs. But Simolin saw Leopold on the 25th, and then the emperor admitted what his chancellor denied, that the cause was the common cause of all crowned heads. With those significant words he quits the stage. Five days later he was dead.

Each step forward taken by Austria aggravated the warlike feeling in the French legislature. But Delessart, through whom the government communicated with foreign powers, mitigated everything, and avoided provocation. Even the note of the 17th, which was delivered at Paris on the 27th, produced no immediate commotion. But Narbonne thought the time had come to carry into effect his policy of war, for the majority was now with him. He threatened to resign unless Bertrand retired, who was the king's nominee among the six ministers; and he only withdrew his threat at the instance of Lafayette and the other generals who were to be in command. Lewis, indignant at this intrigue, dismissed not Bertrand, but Narbonne. The Girondins, in reply, impeached Delessart, who was sent to prison, March 10, and perished there in September. The Feuillant minister resigned. Robespierre, who divined the calculations of the Court, and feared that war might strengthen the arm that bore the banner, resisted the warlike temper, and carried the Jacobins with him. On this issue Girondins and Jacobins separated into distinct parties. The Girondins inclined to an inevitable Republic, because they distrusted the king; but they accepted the Const.i.tution, and did not reject a king at low pressure, such as had been invented by the Whigs. They were persuaded that, in case of war, Lewis would intrigue with the enemy, would be detected, and would be at their mercy. "It is well that we should be betrayed," said Brissot, "because then we shall destroy the traitors." And Vergniaud, whose dignity and elevation of language have made him a cla.s.sic, pointed to the Tuileries and said, "Terror has too often issued from that palace in the name of a despot. Let it enter, to-day, in the name of the law." They suspected, and suspected truly, that the menacing note from Vienna was inspired at Paris. They formed a new ministry, with Dumouriez at the Foreign Office. Dumouriez gave Austria a fixed term to renounce its policy of coercing France by a concert of Powers; and as Kaunitz stood his ground, and upheld his former statements of policy, on April 20 Lewis declared war against his wife's nephew, Francis, king of Hungary. Marie Antoinette triumphed, through her influence on her own family. Formally it was not a war for her deliverance, but a war declared by France, which might be turned to her advantage. To be of use to her, it must be unsuccessful; and in order to ensure defeat, she betrayed to the Court of Vienna the plan of operations adopted in Council the day before.

XIV

DUMOURIEZ

As the war was more often a cause of political events than a consequence, it will be convenient to follow up the progress of military affairs to the fall of Dumouriez, postponing the catastrophe of monarchy to next week.

On the 17th of February 1792 Pitt informed the House of Commons that the situation of Europe had never afforded such a.s.surance of continued peace. He did not yet recognise the peril that lay in the new French Const.i.tution. Under that Const.i.tution, no government could be deemed legitimate unless it aimed at liberty, and derived its powers from the national will. All else is usurpation; and against usurped authority, insurrection is a duty. The Rights of Man were meant for general application, and were no more specifically French than the multiplication table. They were not founded on national character and history, but on Reason, which is the same for all men. The Revolution was essentially universal and aggressive; and although these consequences of its original principle were a.s.siduously repressed by the First a.s.sembly, they were proclaimed by the Second, and roused the threatened Powers to intervene. Apart from this inflaming cause the motives of the international conflict were indecisive. The emperor urged the affair of Avignon, the injury to German potentates who had possessions in Alsace, the complicity of France in the Belgian troubles, and the need of European concert while the French denied the foundations of European polity.

Dumouriez offered to withdraw the French troops from the frontier, if Austria would send no more reinforcements, but at that moment the queen sent word of an intended attack on Liege. The offer seemed perfidious, and envenomed the quarrel. Marie Antoinette despatched Goguelat, the man who was not at his post on the flight to Varennes, to implore intervention. She also gave Mercy her notions as to an Austrian manifesto; and in this letter, dated April 30, there is no sign of alarm, and no suggestion yet that France might be cowed by the use of exorbitant menaces. Dumouriez, who desired war with Austria, endeavoured to detach Prussia from the alliance. He invited the king to arbitrate in the Alsatian dispute, and promised deference to his award. He proposed that the prerogative should be enlarged, the princes indemnified, the _emigres_ permitted to return. Frederic William was unmoved by these advances. He relied on the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine to compensate both allies, and he expected to succeed, because his army was the most ill.u.s.trious of all armies in Europe. He wished to restore the _emigres_, who would support him against Austria, and the _emigres_ looked to him to set up the order of society that had fallen. "Better to lose a province," they said, "than to live under a const.i.tution."

The allied army was commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, the most admired and popular prince of his time. His own celebrity disabled him. Many years ago Marshal Macmahon said to an officer, since in high command at Berlin, that an army is best when it is composed of soldiers who have never smelt gunpowder, of experienced non-commissioned officers, and of generals with their reputation to make. Brunswick had made his reputation under the great king, and he feared to compromise it. Want of enterprise made him unfit for his position, although n.o.body doubted his capacity. In France, they thought of him for the command of their armies, and even for a still higher post. In spite of the disasters I am about to describe, the Prussians believed in him, and he was again their leader when they met Napoleon. The army which he led across the Rhine fell short of the stipulated number by 35,000 men. Francis, the new emperor, did not fulfil his engagements, and entered on the expedition with divided counsels.

Kaunitz, who was eighty-two years of age, and knew the affairs of Europe better than any other man, condemned the policy of his new master. He represented that they did not know what they were going to fight for; that Lewis had never explained what changes in the Const.i.tution would satisfy him; that nothing could be expected from disaffection, and nothing could be done for a system which was extinct. On August 2 he resigned office, and made way for men who speculated on the dismemberment of France, and expected to see a shrunken monarchy in the north and a confederate republic in the south.

The entire force brought together for the invasion amounted to about 80,000 men, of which half were Prussians. When they were a.s.sembled on the Rhine, it became necessary to explain to the French people why they were coming, and what they meant to do. Headquarters were at Frankfort, when a confidential emissary from Lewis XVI., Mallet du Pan, appeared on the scene. Mallet du Pan was neither a brilliant writer like Burke and De Maistre and Gentz, nor an original and constructive thinker like Sieyes; but he was the most sagacious of all the politicians who watched the course of the Revolution. As a Genevese republican he approached the study of French affairs with no prejudice towards monarchy, aristocracy, or Catholicism. A Liberal at first, like Mounier and Malouet, he became as hostile as they; and his testimony, which had been enlightened and wise, became morose and monotonous when his cause was lost, until the Austrian statesmen with whom he corresponded grew tired of his narrowing ideas. He settled in England, and there he died. As he was not a man likely to propose a foolish thing, he was heard with attention. He proposed that the allies should declare that they were warring on Jacobinism, not on liberty, and would make no terms until the king regained his rightful power. If he was injured, they would inflict a terrible vengeance.

Whilst Mallet's text was being manipulated by European diplomacy at Frankfort, Marie Antoinette, acting through Fersen, disturbed their counsels. The queen understood how to control her pen, and to repress the language of emotion. But after June 20 she could not doubt that another and a more violent outrage was preparing, and that the republicans aimed at the death of the king. The terms in which she uttered her belief outweighed the advice of the sober Genevese. "Save us," she wrote, "if it is yet time. But there is not a moment to lose." And she required a declaration of intention so terrific that it would crush the audacity of Paris. Montmorin and Mercy were convinced that she was right. Malouet alone among royalist politicians expected that the measure she proposed would do more harm than good. Fersen, to whom her supplications were addressed, employed an _emigre_ named Limon to draw up a manifesto equal to the occasion, and Limon, bearing credentials from Mercy, submitted his composition to the allied sovereigns. He announced that the Republicans would be exterminated, and Paris destroyed. Already Burke had written: "If ever a foreign prince enters into France, he must enter it as into a country of a.s.sa.s.sins. The mode of civilised war will not be practised; nor are the French, who act on the present system, ent.i.tled to expect it."

Mallet du Pan himself had declared that there ought to be no pernicious mercy, and that humanity would be a crime. In reality, the difference between his tone and the fanatic who superseded him was not a wide one.

The manifesto, which proceeded from the queen, which had the sanction of Fersen, of Mercy, of Bouille, was accepted at once by the emperor.

The Prussians introduced some alterations, and Brunswick signed it on July 25. His mind misgave him at the time, and he regretted afterwards that he had not died before he set his hand to it. Mercy, when it was too late, wished to put another declaration in its place. The Prussian ministers would not suffer the text to be published at Berlin. They allowed the author to fall into poverty and obscurity. He had acted in the spirit of the _emigres_.

On July 27 the Princes issued a declaration of their own, to the effect that not Paris only should suffer the extremity of martial law, but every town to which the king might be taken if he was removed from the capital. Breteuil, although he complained that the invaders exhibited an intolerable clemency, disapproved the second proclamation. But Limon demanded the destruction of Varennes, and the _emigres_ expected that severities should be inflicted on the population as they went along. The idea of employing menaces so awful as to inspire terror at a distance of 300 miles was fatal to those who suggested it; but the danger was immediate, and the consequences of inaction were certain, for the destined a.s.sailants of the Tuileries were on the march from Toulon and Brest. It was not so certain that the king would be unable to defend himself. The manifesto was a desperate resource in a losing cause, and it is not clear that wiser and more moderate words would have done better. The text was not published at Paris until August 3. The allies were too far away for their threats to be treated seriously, and they are not answerable for consequences which were already prepared and expected. But their manifesto strengthened the hands of Danton, a.s.sured the triumph of the violent sections, and suggested the use to which terror may be put in revolutions. It contributed to the fall of the monarchy, and still more to the slaughter of the royalists three weeks later. The weapon forged by men unable to employ it was adopted by their enemies, and served the cause it was intended to destroy.

The Declaration united the French people against its authors. The Republicans whom it threatened and denounced became the appointed leaders of the national defence, and the cause of the Republic became identified with the safety of the nation. In order to withstand the invasion, and to preserve Paris from the fate of Jerusalem, the army gave itself to the dominant faction. The royalist element vanished from its ranks. Lafayette made one last attempt to uphold the Const.i.tution, but his men repulsed him. He went over to imperial territory, and was detained in prison as the guilty author of the Revolution. Dumouriez succeeded to his command, and adhered to the new government. Out of 9000 officers in the king's service, 6000 had resigned, and, for the most part, had emigrated. Their places were filled by new men. In 1791, 100,000 volunteers had been enrolled, and enjoyed the privilege of electing their own officers. This became the popular force, and recruits preferred it to the line, where discipline was sterner and elected commanders were unknown. The men who now rose from the ranks proved better professional soldiers than the fine gentlemen whom they replaced. Talent could not fail to make its way.

Those volunteer officers of 1791 and 1792 included most of the men whom the long war raised to eminence. Seventeen of the twenty-six marshals of Napoleon were among them.

On the 19th of August, four months after war had been declared, the allies entered France by the line of the Moselle. There was one French army to their left at Metz, and another to their right along Vauban's chain of fortresses, with an undefended interval between. To widen the gap they laid siege to Longwy, the nearest fortified place, and took it, after a feeble resistance, on August 24. When the news spread there was a moment of alarm, and the Council of Defence proposed to retire from the capital. Danton declared that he would burn Paris to the ground rather than abandon it to the enemy. Lavergne, who made so poor a defence at Longwy, was afterwards condemned to death. He was disheartened by disaster, but his wife cried out that she would perish with him, and the judges granted her prayer. She strove to give him comfort and courage along the way, and they were guillotined together.

From Longwy the Prussians advanced upon Verdun, which surrendered September 2, after one day's bombardment, and there was not a rampart between them and the capital. A few miles beyond Verdun the roads to the west traversed the Argonne, a low wooded range of hills pierced in five places by narrow defiles, easy to defend. Then came the open country of Champagne, and the valley of the Marne, leading, without a natural or artificial obstacle, to Paris.

On the 7th of September Pitt wrote that he expected Brunswick soon to reach his goal. There was no enemy in his front, while on his flank Dumouriez clung to his frontier strongholds, persuaded that he would arrest the invasion if he threatened the Austrians at Brussels, where they were weakened by recent insurrection and civil war. The French government rejected his audacious project, and ordered him to move on Chalons, and cover the heart of France. At Sedan, Dumouriez could hear heavy firing at a distance, and knew that Verdun was attacked, and could not hold out. He quickly changed his plan, postponing Belgium, but not for long, and fell back on the pa.s.ses of the forest that he was about to make so famous. "They are the Thermopylae of France," he said, "but I mean to do better than Leonidas."

Brunswick, delaying his c.u.mbrous march for ten days, while Breteuil organised a new administration at Verdun, gave time for the French to strengthen their position. Before moving forward, he pointed out on the map the place where he intended to halt on the 16th, and men heard for the first time the historic name, Valmy. On the 14th Clerfayt, with the Austrians, forced one of the pa.s.ses, and turned the French left. At nightfall, Dumouriez evacuated his Thermopylae more expeditiously than became a rival Leonidas, and established himself across the great road to Chalons, opposite the southern defile of the Argonne, which extends between Clermont and St. Menehould, where Drouet rode in pursuit of the king. His infantry encountered Prussian troopers and ran away. Ten thousand men, he wrote, were put to flight by fifteen hundred hussars.

Napoleon said, at St. Helena, that he believed himself to be bolder than any general that ever lived, but he would never have dared to hold the position that Dumouriez took up. He was outnumbered, three to one. He had been outmanoeuvred, and driven from his fastness by the most enterprising of the allied generals; and his recruits refused to face the enemy. He never for a moment lost confidence in himself, for the time wasted at Verdun had given him the measure of his opponents.

He summoned Kellermann, with the army of Metz, and Beurnonville, with 10,000 men, from Lille, and they arrived, just in time, on the 19th.

Beurnonville, when his telescope showed him a regular army in order of battle, took alarm and fell back, thinking it must be Brunswick. It proved to be Dumouriez; and on the morning of September 20 he was at the head of 53,000 men, with the allies gathering in his front. The Prussians had come through the woods by the pa.s.s he had abandoned, and as they turned to face him, they stood with their backs to the great Catalaunian plain, which was traversed by the high road to Paris. They had been for a month in France, and had met with no resistance.

Lafayette had deserted. The military breakdown was so apparent that the colonel of infantry, as he marched out of Longwy, threw himself into the river, and the governor of Verdun blew out his brains.

Clerfayt's success on the 14th and the rout of the following day raised the hopes of the Germans, and they wrote on the 19th that they were turning the enemy, and were sure of destroying him, if he was rash enough to wait their attack. From his prison at Luxemburg Lafayette urged them onward, and hinted that Dumouriez might be induced to unite with them for the rescue of the king.

Therefore, on the morning of September 20, when the mist rose over the French army drawn up on the low hills before them, there was joy in the Prussian camp, and the battalions that had been trained at Potsdam, under the eye of the great king, to the admiration of Europe, received for the first time the republican fire. They were 34,000.

Kellermann opposed them with 36,000 men, and 40 guns against 58. It soon appeared that things were not going as the invaders had expected.

The French soldiers were not frightened by the cannonade. Beurnonville rode up to one of his regiments and told them to lie down, to make way for shot. They refused to obey whilst he exposed himself on horseback. After time had been allowed for artillery to produce its effect on republican nerve, the Prussian infantry made ready to attack. Gouvion St. Cyr, the only general of his time whom Napoleon acknowledged as his equal, believed that the French would not have stood at close quarters. But the word to advance was never given.

The secret of war, said Wellington, is to find out what is going on on the other side of the hill. When Brunswick rode over the field some days later, a staff officer asked him why he had not moved forward. He answered, "Because I did not know what was behind the hill." There was Dumouriez's reserve of 16,000 men. He had sent to the front as many as were needed to fill Kellermann's line, and left to his colleague the part for which he was fitted. For his conduct that day Kellermann was named a marshal of the Empire and duke of Valmy; but the whole world was aware that the event was due to the brain of the man in the background. When the French had lost 300 men without wavering, the Prussians ceased firing, and broke off the engagement. Their loss was only 184. Yet this third-rate and mediocre action is counted, with Waterloo and Gettysburg, among the decisive battles of history; and Goethe was not the only man there who knew that the scene before him was the beginning of a new epoch for mankind. With 36,000 men and 40 guns the French had arrested the advance of Europe, not by skilful tactics or the touch of steel, but by the moral effect of their solidity when they met the best of existing armies. The nation discovered that the Continent was at its mercy, and the war begun for the salvation of monarchy became a war for the expansion of the Republic. It was founded at Paris, and consolidated at Valmy. Yet no military event was less decisive. The French stood their ground because n.o.body attacked them, and they were not attacked because they stood their ground. The Prussians suffered a strategic, though not a tactical defeat. By retiring to their encampment they renounced the purposes for which they went to war, the province they occupied, and the prestige of Frederic. They no longer possessed the advantage of numbers, and without superior numbers there could be no dash for Paris.

The object of the invasion was unattainable by force, but something might be got by negotiation, if it was undertaken before force had definitely failed. They were losing heavily, by disease and want, while French recruits were pouring in. Therefore Dumouriez wished for time. The king's secretary had been captured, and he sent him with overtures, representing that the intended advance upon Paris was hopeless, and that Prussia had more interests in common with France than with Austria. Frederic William at once surrendered the original demands. He made no stipulations now regarding the future government of France or the treatment of the _emigres_. He only demanded that Lewis should be restored, in such manner as might seem good to France, and that the propaganda of revolution should be put an end to. That propaganda was one of the weapons by which the French checked and embarra.s.sed the champions of European absolutism, and it was obvious that it would receive encouragement from their success at Valmy. And it was a point of honour to speak for the imprisoned monarch. But it had become a vain thing. Dumouriez produced a newspaper with the decree of the new a.s.sembly abolishing monarchy. It was hard to say what the allies were now doing on French soil. "Only do something for the king," said Brunswick, "and we will go." The Austrians would be satisfied if he was only a stadtholder. Kellermann promised that peace might be obtained if he was sent back to the Tuileries. It was all too late. The Prince, in whose behalf the allies invaded France, was now a hostage in the power of their enemies; all that they could obtain was a pledge not to carry the revolution into foreign countries. Their position grew more dangerous every day, and Dumouriez grew stronger.

At the end of September Frederic William abandoned Lewis to his fate.

He had contributed to his dethronement by entering France, and he contributed to his execution by leaving it. He did not feel that he had deserved so prodigious a humiliation. If the Austrians had joined as they promised with 100,000 men, the march upon the capital would have been conceivable with energetic commanders. And the king could justly say that he had favoured spirited schemes, and had been baffled by the faltering commander-in-chief. He attempted, by throwing out hints of neutrality, to escape without further loss. Dumouriez calculated that every attack would weld the allies more closely together, and refrained from molesting them. Early in October they evacuated the conquered province, and retreated to the Rhine, pursued by a few random shots, while Dumouriez hastened to Paris, to be hailed as the saviour of his country.

The invasion of 1792 roused a crouching lion; and the French, after their easy and victorious defence, went over to the attack. Whilst the invaders were standing still, too weak to advance and too proud to withdraw, the conquest of Europe began. The king of Sardinia, as the father-in-law of the Comte d'Artois, had thrown himself into the counter-revolutionary policy, and the scheme for attacking Lyons. Of all European monarchs, since the murder of Gustavus, he was the most hostile. An army under Montesquieu occupied Savoy and Nice without resistance, and the people readily adopted the new system. A week later Custine seized the left bank of the Rhine, where diminutive secular and ecclesiastical territories, without cohesion, were an easy prey. The Declaration of Rights, said Gouverneur Morris, proved quite as effectual as the trumpets of Joshua. Mentz fell, October 21, and Custine occupied Frankfort and replenished his military chest. This excursion into the middle of the Empire was not authorised by State policy. The idea was already taking shape that the safety of France required the defensible and historic, or, as they unscientifically called it, the natural frontier of the Rhine, and that the grand conflict with Austria should be transferred to Italy. Germany was a nation of armed men, and was best let alone. In Italy, the Austrians would have only their own resources for war. Their most vulnerable point was the outlying princ.i.p.ality of Belgium, so distant from Vienna and so near to Paris.

Dumouriez was now at liberty to deliver the stroke by which he had hoped to stop the invasion, as Scipio drove Hannibal from Italy by landing in Africa. By carrying the war in that direction he would occupy the Imperialists, and would not excite the resentment of Prussia. The country had not long been pacified, and it presented the unusual feature that Conservatives and Liberals alike were patriotic and rebellious. As a place where disaffection would a.s.sist war, it was there that the process of European revolution would properly begin. On October 19 Dumouriez a.s.sumed the command of 70,000 men, in the region he had held before his flank march to the Argonne. One of his lieutenants was the Peruvian adventurer Miranda, whose mission it was to apply the movement in Europe to the rescue of Spanish America. The other was known as Prince egalite, senior, whose wonderful future was already foreseen both by Dumouriez and Danton.