September in Argonne.
Plain, at any rate, is one thing: that the _fear_, whatever of
fear those Aristocrat enemies might need, has been brought about.
The matter is getting serious then! Sansculottism too has become
a Fact, and seems minded to assert itself as such? This huge
mooncalf of Sansculottism, staggering about, as young calves do,
is not mockable only, and soft like another calf; but terrible
too, if you prick it; and, through its hideous nostrils, blows
fire!—Aristocrats, with pale panic in their hearts, fly towards
covert; and a light rises to them over several things; or rather
a confused transition towards light, whereby for the moment
darkness is only darker than ever. But, What will become of this
France? Here is a question! France is dancing its desert-waltz,
as Sahara does when the winds waken; in whirlblasts twenty-five
millions in number; waltzing towards Townhalls, Aristocrat
Prisons, and Election Committee-rooms; towards Brunswick and the
Frontiers;—towards a New Chapter of Universal History; if indeed
it be not the _Finis_, and winding-up of that!
In Election Committee-rooms there is now no dubiety; but the work
goes bravely along. The Convention is getting chosen,—really in a
decisive spirit; in the Townhall we already date _First year of
the Republic_. Some Two hundred of our best Legislators may be
re-elected, the Mountain bodily: Robespierre, with Mayor Pétion,
Buzot, Curate Grégoire, Rabaut, some three score
Old-Constituents; though we once had only “thirty voices.” All
these; and along with them, friends long known to Revolutionary
fame: Camille Desmoulins, though he stutters in speech; Manuel,
Tallien and Company; Journalists Gorsas, Carra, Mercier, Louvet
of _Faublas;_ Clootz Speaker of Mankind; Collot d’Herbois,
tearing a passion to rags; Fabre d’Eglantine, speculative
Pamphleteer; Legendre the solid Butcher; nay Marat, though rural
France can hardly believe it, or even believe that there _is_ a
Marat except in print. Of Minister Danton, who will lay down his
Ministry for a Membership, we need not speak. Paris is fervent;
nor is the Country wanting to itself. Barbaroux, Rebecqui, and
fervid Patriots are coming from Marseilles. Seven hundred and
forty-five men (or indeed forty-nine, for Avignon now sends Four)
are gathering: so many are to meet; not so many are to part!
Attorney Carrier from Aurillac, Ex-Priest Lebon from Arras, these
shall both gain a _name_. Mountainous Auvergne re-elects her
Romme: hardy tiller of the soil, once Mathematical Professor;
who, unconscious, carries in petto a remarkable _New Calendar_,
with Messidors, Pluvioses, and such like;—and having given it
well forth, shall depart by the death they call Roman. Sieyes
old-Constituent comes; to make new Constitutions as many as
wanted: for the rest, peering out of his clear cautious eyes, he
will cower low in many an emergency, and find silence safest.
Young Saint-Just is coming, deputed by Aisne in the North; more
like a Student than a Senator: not four-and-twenty yet; who has
written Books; a youth of slight stature, with mild mellow voice,
enthusiast olive-complexion, and long dark hair. Féraud, from the
far valley D’Aure in the folds of the Pyrenees, is coming; an
ardent Republican; doomed to fame, at least in death.
All manner of Patriot men are coming: Teachers, Husbandmen,
Priests and Ex-Priests, Traders, Doctors; above all, Talkers, or
the Attorney-species. Man-midwives, as Levasseur of the Sarthe,
are not wanting. Nor Artists: gross David, with the swoln cheek,
has long painted, with genius in a state of convulsion; and will
now legislate. The swoln cheek, choking his words in the birth,
totally disqualifies him as orator; but his pencil, his head, his
gross hot heart, with genius in a state of convulsion, will be
there. A man bodily and mentally swoln-cheeked, disproportionate;
flabby-large, instead of great; weak withal as in a state of
convulsion, not strong in a state of composure: so let him play
his part. Nor are naturalised Benefactors of the Species
forgotten: Priestley, elected by the Orne Department, but
declining: Paine the rebellious Needleman, by the Pas de Calais,
who accepts.
Few Nobles come, and yet not none. Paul François Barras, “noble
as the Barrases, old as the rocks of Provence;” he is one. The
reckless, shipwrecked man: flung ashore on the coast of the
Maldives long ago, while sailing and soldiering as Indian
Fighter; flung ashore since then, as hungry Parisian
Pleasure-hunter and Half-pay, on many a Circe Island, with
temporary enchantment, temporary conversion into beasthood and
hoghood;—the remote Var Department has now sent him hither. A man
of heat and haste; defective in utterance; defective indeed in
any thing to utter; yet not without a certain rapidity of glance,
a certain swift transient courage; who, in these times, Fortune
favouring, may go far. He is tall, handsome to the eye, “only the
complexion a little yellow;” but “with a robe of purple with a
scarlet cloak and plume of tricolor, on occasions of solemnity,”
the man will look well.[553] Lepelletier Saint-Fargeau,
Old-Constituent, is a kind of noble, and of enormous wealth; he
too has come hither:—to have the Pain of Death _abolished?_
Hapless Ex-Parlementeer! Nay, among our Sixty Old-Constituents,
see Philippe d’Orléans a Prince of the Blood! Not now
_D’Orléans:_ for, Feudalism being swept from the world, he
demands of his worthy friends the Electors of Paris, to have a
new name of their choosing; whereupon Procureur Manuel, like an
antithetic literary man, recommends _Equality_, Egalité. A
Philippe Egalité therefore will sit; seen of the Earth and
Heaven.
Such a Convention is gathering itself together. Mere angry
poultry in moulting season; whom Brunswick’s grenadiers and
cannoneers will give short account of. Would the weather only
mend a little![554]
In vain, O Bertrand! The weather will not mend a whit:—nay even
if it did? Dumouriez Polymetis, though Bertrand knows it not,
started from brief slumber at Sedan, on that morning of the 29th
of August; with stealthiness, with promptitude, audacity. Some
three mornings after that, Brunswick, opening wide eyes,
perceives the Passes of the Argonne all seized; blocked with
felled trees, fortified with camps; and that it is a most shifty
swift Dumouriez this, who has outwitted him!
The manœuvre may cost Brunswick “a loss of three weeks,” very
fatal in these circumstances. A Mountain-wall of forty miles
lying between him and Paris: which he should have
preoccupied;—which how now to get possession of? Also the rain it
raineth every day; and we are in a hungry Champagne Pouilleuse, a
land flowing only with ditch-water. How to cross this
Mountain-wall of the Argonne; or what in the world to do with
it?—there are marchings and wet splashings by steep paths, with
_sackerments_ and guttural interjections; forcings of Argonne
Passes,—which unhappily will not force. Through the woods,
volleying War reverberates, like huge gong-music, or Moloch’s
kettledrum, borne by the echoes; swoln torrents boil angrily
round the foot of rocks, floating pale carcasses of men. In vain!
Islettes Village, with its church-steeple, rises intact in the
Mountain-pass, between the embosoming heights; your forced
marchings and climbings have become forced slidings, and
tumblings back. From the hill-tops thou seest nothing but dumb
crags, and endless wet moaning woods; the Clermont _Vache_ (huge
Cow that she is) disclosing herself[555] at intervals; flinging
off her cloud-blanket, and soon taking it on again, drowned in
the pouring Heaven. The Argonne Passes will not force: you must
_skirt_ the Argonne; go round by the end of it.
But fancy whether the Emigrant Seigneurs have not got their
brilliancy dulled a little; whether that “Foot Regiment in
red-facings with nankeen trousers” could be in field-day order!
In place of gasconading, a sort of desperation, and hydrophobia
from _excess_ of water, is threatening to supervene. Young Prince
de Ligne, son of that brave literary De Ligne the Thundergod of
Dandies, fell backwards; shot dead in Grand-Pré, the Northmost of
the Passes: Brunswick is skirting and rounding, laboriously, by
the extremity of the South. Four days; days of a rain as of
Noah,—without fire, without food! For fire you cut down green
trees, and produce smoke; for food you eat green grapes, and
produce colic, pestilential dysentery, ὀλέκοντο δὲ λαοί. And the
Peasants assassinate us, they do not join us; shrill women cry
shame on us, threaten to draw their very scissors on us! O ye
hapless dulled-bright Seigneurs, and hydrophobic splashed
Nankeens;—but O, ten times more, ye poor _sackerment_ing
ghastly-visaged Hessians and Hulans, fallen on your backs; who
had no call to die there, except compulsion and three-halfpence
a-day! Nor has Mrs. Le Blanc of the Golden Arm a good time of it,
in her bower of dripping rushes. Assassinating Peasants are
hanged; Old-Constituent Honourable members, though of venerable
age, ride in carts with their hands tied; these are the woes of
war.
Thus they; sprawling and wriggling, far and wide, on the slopes
and passes of the Argonne;—a loss to Brunswick of five-and-twenty
disastrous days. There is wriggling and struggling; facing,
backing, and right-about facing; as the positions shift, and the
Argonne gets partly rounded, partly forced:—but still Dumouriez,
force him, round him as you will, sticks like a rooted fixture on
the ground; fixture with many _hinges;_ wheeling now this way,
now that; shewing always new front, in the most unexpected
manner: nowise consenting to take himself away. Recruits stream
up on him: full of heart; yet rather difficult to deal with.
Behind Grand-Pré, for example, Grand-Pré which is on the
wrong-side of the Argonne, for we are now forced and rounded,—the
full heart, in one of those wheelings and shewings of new front,
did as it were overset itself, as full hearts are liable to do;
and there rose a shriek of _sauve qui peut_, and a death-panic
which had nigh ruined all! So that the General had to come
galloping; and, with thunder-words, with gesture, stroke of drawn
sword even, check and rally, and bring back the sense of
shame;[556]—nay to seize the first shriekers and ringleaders;
“shave their heads and eyebrows,” and pack them forth into the
world as a sign. Thus too (for really the rations are short, and
wet camping with hungry stomach brings bad humour) there is like
to be mutiny. Whereupon again Dumouriez “arrives at the head of
their line, with his staff, and an escort of a hundred huzzars.
He had placed some squadrons behind them, the artillery in front;
he said to them: ‘As for you, for I will neither call you
citizens, nor soldiers, nor my men (_ni mes enfans_), you see
before you this artillery, behind you this cavalry. You have
dishonoured yourselves by crimes. If you amend, and grow to
behave like this brave Army which you have the honour of
belonging to, you will find in me a good father. But plunderers
and assassins I do not suffer here. At the smallest mutiny I will
have you shivered in pieces (_hacher en pièces_). Seek out the
scoundrels that are among you, and dismiss them yourselves; I
hold you responsible for them.’”[557]
Patience, O Dumouriez! This uncertain heap of shriekers,
mutineers, were they once drilled and inured, will become a
phalanxed mass of Fighters; and wheel and whirl, to order,
swiftly like the wind or the whirlwind: tanned mustachio-figures;
often barefoot, even bare-backed; with sinews of iron; who
require only bread and gunpowder: very Sons of Fire, the
adroitest, hastiest, hottest ever seen perhaps since Attila’s
time. They may conquer and overrun amazingly, much as that same
Attila did;—whose Attila’s-Camp and Battlefield thou now seest,
on this very ground;[558] who, after sweeping bare the world,
was, with difficulty, and days of tough fighting, checked _here_
by Roman Ætius and Fortune; and his dust-cloud made to vanish in
the East again!—
Strangely enough, in this shrieking Confusion of a Soldiery,
which we saw long since fallen all suicidally out of square in
suicidal collision,—at Nanci, or on the streets of Metz, where
brave Bouillé stood with drawn sword; and which has collided and
ground itself to pieces worse and worse ever since, down now to
such a state: in this shrieking Confusion, and not elsewhere,
lies the first germ of returning Order for France! Round which,
we say, poor France nearly all ground down suicidally likewise
into rubbish and Chaos, will be glad to rally; to begin growing,
and new-shaping her inorganic dust: very slowly, through
centuries, through Napoleons, Louis Philippes, and other the like
media and phases,—into a new, infinitely preferable France, we
can hope!—
These wheelings and movements in the region of the Argonne, which
are all faithfully described by Dumouriez himself, and more
interesting to us than Hoyle’s or Philidor’s best Game of Chess,
let us, nevertheless, O Reader, entirely omit;—and hasten to
remark two things: the first a minute private, the second a large
public thing. Our minute private thing is: the presence, in the
Prussian host, in that war-game of the Argonne, of a certain Man,
belonging to the sort called Immortal; who, in days since then,
is becoming visible more and more, in that character, as the
Transitory more and more vanishes; for from of old it was
remarked that when the Gods appear among men, it is seldom in
recognisable shape; thus Admetus“ neatherds give Apollo a draught
of their goatskin whey-bottle (well if they do not give him
strokes with their ox-rungs), not dreaming that he is the Sungod!
This man’s name is _Johann Wolfgang von Goethe_. He is Herzog
Weimar’s Minister, come with the small contingent of Weimar; to
do insignificant unmilitary duty here; very irrecognizable to
nearly all! He stands at present, with drawn bridle, on the
height near Saint-Menehould, making an experiment on the
“cannon-fever;” having ridden thither against persuasion, into
the dance and firing of the cannon-balls, with a scientific
desire to understand what that same cannon-fever may be: “The
sound of them,” says he, “is curious enough; as if it were
compounded of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water and the
whistle of birds. By degrees you get a very uncommon sensation;
which can only be described by similitude. It seems as if you
were in some place extremely hot, and at the same time were
completely penetrated by the heat of it; so that you feel as if
you and this element you are in were perfectly on a par. The
eyesight loses nothing of its strength or distinctness; and yet
it is as if all things had got a kind of brown-red colour, which
makes the situation and the objects still more impressive on
you.”[559]
This is the cannon-fever, as a World-Poet feels it.—A man
entirely irrecognisable! In whose irrecognisable head, meanwhile,
there verily is the spiritual counterpart (and call it
complement) of this same huge Death-Birth of the World; which now
effectuates itself, outwardly in the Argonne, in such
cannon-thunder; inwardly, in the irrecognisable head, quite
otherwise than by thunder! Mark that man, O Reader, as the
memorablest of all the memorable in this Argonne Campaign. What
we say of him is not dream, nor flourish of rhetoric; but
scientific historic fact; as many men, now at this distance, see
or begin to see.
But the large public thing we had to remark is this: That the
Twentieth of September, 1792, was a raw morning covered with
mist; that from three in the morning Sainte-Menehould, and those
Villages and homesteads we know of old were stirred by the rumble
of artillery-wagons, by the clatter of hoofs, and many footed
tramp of men: all manner of military, Patriot and Prussian,
taking up positions, on the Heights of La Lune and other Heights;
shifting and shoving,—seemingly in some dread chess-game; which
may the Heavens turn to good! The Miller of Valmy has fled dusty
under ground; his Mill, were it never so windy, will have rest
today. At seven in the morning the mist clears off: see
Kellermann, Dumouriez’ second in command, with “eighteen pieces
of cannon,” and deep-serried ranks, drawn up round that same
silent Windmill, on his knoll of strength; Brunswick, also, with
serried ranks and cannon, glooming over to him from the height of
La Lune; only the little brook and its little dell now parting
them.
So that the much-longed-for has come at last! Instead of hunger
and dysentery, we shall have sharp shot; and then!—Dumouriez,
with force and firm front, looks on from a neighbouring height;
can help only with his wishes, in silence. Lo, the eighteen
pieces do bluster and bark, responsive to the bluster of La Lune;
and thunder-clouds mount into the air; and echoes roar through
all dells, far into the depths of Argonne Wood (deserted now);
and limbs and lives of men fly dissipated, this way and that. Can
Brunswick make an impression on them? The dull-bright Seigneurs
stand biting their thumbs: these Sansculottes seem not to fly
like poultry! Towards noontide a cannon-shot blows Kellermann’s
horse from under him; there bursts a powder-cart high into the
air, with knell heard over all: some swagging and swaying
observable;—Brunswick will try! ‘_Camarades_,’ cries Kellermann,
‘_Vive la Patrie! Allons vaincre pour elle_, Let us conquer.’
‘Live the Fatherland!’ rings responsive, to the welkin, like
rolling-fire from side to side: our ranks are as firm as rocks;
and Brunswick may _re_cross the dell, ineffectual; regain his old
position on La Lune; not unbattered by the way. And so, for the
length of a September day,—with bluster and bark; with bellow far
echoing! The cannonade lasts till sunset; and no impression made.
Till an hour after sunset, the few remaining Clocks of the
District striking Seven; at this late time of day Brunswick tries
again. With not a whit better fortune! He is met by rock-ranks,
by shouts of _Vive la Patrie;_ and driven back, not unbattered.
Whereupon he ceases; retires “to the Tavern of La Lune;” and sets
to raising a redoute lest _he_ be attacked!
Verily so: ye dulled-bright Seigneurs, make of it what ye may.
Ah, and France does not rise round us in mass; and the Peasants
do not join us, but assassinate us: neither hanging nor any
persuasion will induce them! They have lost their old
distinguishing love of King, and King’s-cloak,—I fear,
altogether; and will even fight to be rid of it: that seems now
their humour. Nor does Austria prosper, nor the siege of
Thionville. The Thionvillers, carrying their insolence to the
epigrammatic pitch, have put a Wooden Horse on their walls, with
a bundle of hay hung from him, and this Inscription: “When I
finish my hay, you will take Thionville.”[560] To such height has
the frenzy of mankind risen.
The trenches of Thionville may shut: and what though those of
Lille open? The Earth smiles not on us, nor the Heaven; but weeps
and blears itself, in sour rain, and worse. Our very friends
insult us; we are wounded in the house of our friends: ‘His
Majesty of Prussia had a greatcoat, when the rain came; and
(contrary to all known laws) he put it on, though our two French
Princes, the hope of their country, had none!’ To which indeed,
as Goethe admits, what answer could be made?[561]—Cold and Hunger
and Affront, Colic and Dysentery and Death; and we here, cowering
_redouted_, most unredoubtable, amid the “tattered corn-shocks
and deformed stubble,” on the splashy Height of La Lune, round
the mean Tavern de La Lune!—
This is the Cannonade of Valmy; wherein the World-Poet
experimented on the cannon-fever; wherein the French Sansculottes
did not fly like poultry. Precious to France! Every soldier did
his duty, and Alsatian Kellermann (how preferable to old Lückner
the dismissed!) began to become greater; and _Égalité Fils_,
Equality Junior, a light gallant Field-Officer, distinguished
himself by intrepidity:—it is the same intrepid individual who
now, as Louis-Philippe, without the Equality, struggles, under
sad circumstances, to be called King of the French for a season.