Dumouriez.
Such are the last days of August, 1792; days gloomy, disastrous,
and of evil omen. What will become of this poor France? Dumouriez
rode from the Camp of Maulde, eastward to Sedan, on Tuesday last,
the 28th of the month; reviewed that so-called Army left forlorn
there by Lafayette: the forlorn soldiers gloomed on him; were
heard growling on him, ‘This is one of them, _ce b—e là_, that
made War be declared.’[522] Unpromising Army! Recruits flow in,
filtering through Dépôt after Dépôt; but recruits merely: in want
of all; happy if they have so much as arms. And Longwi has fallen
basely; and Brunswick, and the Prussian King, with his sixty
thousand, will beleaguer Verdun; and Clairfait and Austrians
press deeper in, over the Northern marches: “a hundred and fifty
thousand” as fear counts, “eighty thousand” as the returns shew,
do hem us in; Cimmerian Europe behind them. There is
Castries-and-Broglie chivalry; Royalist foot “in red facing and
nankeen trousers;” breathing death and the gallows.
And lo, finally! at Verdun on Sunday the 2d of September 1792,
Brunswick is here. With his King and sixty thousand, glittering
over the heights, from beyond the winding Meuse River, he looks
down on us, on our “high citadel” and all our confectionery-ovens
(for we are celebrated for confectionery) has sent courteous
summons, in order to spare the effusion of blood!—Resist him to
the death? Every day of retardation precious? How, O General
Beaurepaire (asks the amazed Municipality) shall we resist him?
We, the Verdun Municipals, see no resistance possible. Has he not
sixty thousand, and artillery without end? Retardation,
Patriotism is good; but so likewise is peaceable baking of
pastry, and sleeping in whole skin.—Hapless Beaurepaire stretches
out his hands, and pleads passionately, in the name of country,
honour, of Heaven and of Earth: to no purpose. The Municipals
have, by law, the power of ordering it;—with an Army officered by
Royalism or Crypto-Royalism, such a Law seemed needful: and they
order it, as pacific Pastrycooks, not as heroic Patriots
would,—To surrender! Beaurepaire strides home, with long steps:
his valet, entering the room, sees him “writing eagerly,” and
withdraws. His valet hears then, in a few minutes, the report of
a pistol: Beaurepaire is lying dead; his eager writing had been a
brief suicidal farewell. In this manner died Beaurepaire, wept of
France; buried in the Pantheon, with honourable pension to his
Widow, and for Epitaph these words, _He chose Death rather than
yield to Despots_. The Prussians, descending from the heights,
are peaceable masters of Verdun.
And so Brunswick advances, from stage to stage: who shall now
stay him,—covering forty miles of country? Foragers fly far; the
villages of the North-East are harried; your Hessian forager has
only “three sous a day:” the very Emigrants, it is said, will
take silver-plate,—by way of revenge. Clermont, Sainte-Menehould,
Varennes especially, ye Towns of the _Night of Spurs;_ tremble
ye! Procureur Sausse and the Magistracy of Varennes have fled;
brave Boniface Le Blanc of the _Bras d’Or_ is to the woods: Mrs.
Le Blanc, a young woman fair to look upon, with her young infant,
has to live in greenwood, like a beautiful Bessy Bell of Song,
her bower thatched with rushes;—catching premature
rheumatism.[523] Clermont may ring the tocsin now, and illuminate
itself! Clermont lies at the foot of its _Cow_ (or _Vache_, so
they name that Mountain), a prey to the Hessian spoiler: its fair
women, fairer than most, are robbed: not of life, or what is
dearer, yet of all that is cheaper and portable; for Necessity,
on three half-pence a-day, has no law. At Saint-Menehould, the
enemy has been expected more than once,—our Nationals all turning
out in arms; but was not yet seen. Post-master Drouet, he is not
in the woods, but minding his Election; and will sit in the
Convention, notable King-taker, and bold Old-Dragoon as he is.
Thus on the North-East all roams and runs; and on a set day, the
_date_ of which is irrecoverable by History, Brunswick “has
engaged to dine in Paris,”—the Powers willing. And at Paris, in
the centre, it is as we saw; and in La Vendée, South-West, it is
as we saw; and Sardinia is in the South-East, and Spain is in the
South, and Clairfait with Austria and sieged Thionville is in the
North;—and all France leaps distracted, like the winnowed Sahara
waltzing in sand-colonnades! More desperate posture no country
ever stood in. A country, one would say, which the Majesty of
Prussia (if it so pleased him) might partition, and clip in
pieces, like a Poland; flinging the remainder to poor Brother
Louis,—with directions to keep it quiet, or else _we_ will keep
it for him!
Or perhaps the Upper Powers, minded that a new Chapter in
Universal History shall begin here and not further on, may have
ordered it all otherwise? In that case, Brunswick will not dine
in Paris on the set day; nor, indeed, one knows not when!—Verily,
amid this wreckage, where poor France seems grinding itself down
to dust and bottomless ruin, who knows what miraculous
salient-point of Deliverance and New-life may have already come
into existence there; and be already working there, though as yet
human eye discern it not! On the night of that same twenty-eighth
of August, the unpromising Review-day in Sedan, Dumouriez
assembles a Council of War at his lodgings there. He spreads out
the map of this forlorn war-district: Prussians here, Austrians
there; triumphant both, with broad highway, and little
hinderance, all the way to Paris; we, scattered helpless, here
and here: what to advise? The Generals, strangers to Dumouriez,
look blank enough; know not well what to advise,—if it be not
retreating, and retreating till our recruits accumulate; till
perhaps the chapter of chances turn up some leaf for us; or
Paris, at all events, be sacked at the latest day possible. The
Many-counselled, who “has not closed an eye for three nights,”
listens with little speech to these long cheerless speeches;
merely watching the speaker that he may know him; then wishes
them all good-night;—but beckons a certain young Thouvenot, the
fire of whose looks had pleased him, to wait a moment. Thouvenot
waits: _Voilà_, says Polymetis, pointing to the map! That is the
Forest of Argonne, that long stripe of rocky Mountain and wild
Wood; forty miles long; with but five, or say even three
practicable Passes through it: this, for they have forgotten it,
might one not still seize, though Clairfait sits so nigh? Once
seized;—the Champagne called the Hungry (or worse, Champagne
_Pouilleuse_) on their side of it; the fat Three Bishoprics, and
willing France, on ours; and the Equinox-rains not far;—this
Argonne “might be the Thermopylae of France!”[524]
O brisk Dumouriez Polymetis with thy teeming head, may the gods
grant it!—Polymetis, at any rate, folds his map together, and
flings himself on bed; resolved to try, on the morrow morning.
With astucity, with swiftness, with audacity! One had need to be
a lion-fox, and have luck on one’s side.