Exeunt.
But this Twentieth of September is otherwise a great day. For,
observe, while Kellermann’s horse was flying blown from under him
at the Mill of Valmy, our new National Deputies, that shall be a
NATIONAL CONVENTION, are hovering and gathering about the Hall of
the Hundred Swiss; with intent to constitute themselves!
On the morrow, about noontide, Camus the Archivist is busy
“verifying their powers;” several hundreds of them already here.
Whereupon the Old Legislative comes solemnly over, to merge its
old ashes phœnix-like in the body of the new;—and so forthwith,
returning all solemnly back to the Salle de Manége, there sits a
National Convention, Seven Hundred and Forty-nine complete, or
complete enough; presided by Pétion;—which proceeds directly to
do business. Read that reported afternoon’s-debate, O Reader;
there are few debates like it: dull reporting _Moniteur_ itself
becomes more dramatic than a very Shakespeare. For epigrammatic
Manuel rises, speaks strange things; how the President shall have
a guard of honour, and lodge in the Tuileries:—_rejected_. And
Danton rises and speaks; and Collot d’Herbois rises, and Curate
Gregoire, and lame Couthon of the Mountain rises; and in rapid
Melibœan stanzas, only a few lines each, they propose motions not
a few: That the corner-stone of our new Constitution is
Sovereignty of the People; that our Constitution shall be
accepted by the People or be null; further that the People ought
to be avenged, and have right Judges; that the Imposts must
continue till new order; that Landed and other Property be sacred
forever; finally that “Royalty from this day is abolished in
France:”—_Decreed_ all, before four o’clock strike, with
acclamation of the world![562] The tree was all so ripe; only
shake it and there fall such yellow cart-loads.
And so over in the Valmy Region, as soon as the news come, what
stir is this, audible, visible from our muddy heights of La
Lune?[563] Universal shouting of the French on their opposite
hillside; caps raised on bayonets; and a sound as of _République;
Vive la République_ borne dubious on the winds!—On the morrow
morning, so to speak, Brunswick slings his knapsacks before day,
lights any fires he has; and marches without tap of drum.
Dumouriez finds ghastly symptoms in that camp; “_latrines_ full
of blood!”[564] The chivalrous King of Prussia, for he as we saw
is here in person, may long rue the day; may look colder than
ever on these dulled-bright Seigneurs, and French Princes their
Country’s hope;—and, on the whole, put on his great-coat without
ceremony, happy that he has one. They retire, all retire with
convenient despatch, through a Champagne trodden into a quagmire,
the wild weather pouring on them; Dumouriez through his
Kellermanns and Dillons pricking them a little in the hinder
parts. A little, not much; now pricking, now negotiating: for
Brunswick has his eyes opened; and the Majesty of Prussia is a
repentant Majesty.
Nor has Austria prospered, nor the Wooden Horse of Thionville
bitten his hay; nor Lille City surrendered itself. The Lille
trenches opened, on the 29th of the month; with balls and shells,
and redhot balls; as if not trenches but Vesuvius and the Pit had
opened. It was frightful, say all eye-witnesses; but it is
ineffectual. The Lillers have risen to such temper; especially
after these news from Argonne and the East. Not a
Sans-indispensables in Lille that would surrender for a King’s
ransom. Redhot balls rain, day and night; “six-thousand,” or so,
and bombs “filled internally with oil of turpentine which
splashes up in flame;”—mainly on the dwellings of the
Sansculottes and Poor; the streets of the Rich being spared. But
the Sansculottes get water-pails; form quenching-regulations,
‘The ball is in Peter’s house!’ ‘The ball is in John’s!’ They
divide their lodging and substance with each other; shout _Vive
la République_; and faint not in heart. A ball thunders through
the main chamber of the Hôtel-de-Ville, while the Commune is
there assembled: ‘We are in permanence,’ says one, coldly,
proceeding with his business; and the ball remains permanent too,
sticking in the wall, probably to this day.[565]
The Austrian Archduchess (Queen’s Sister) will herself see red
artillery fired; in their over-haste to satisfy an Archduchess
“two mortars explode and kill thirty persons.” It is in vain;
Lille, often burning, is always quenched again; Lille will not
yield. The very boys deftly wrench the matches out of fallen
bombs: “a man clutches a rolling ball with his hat, which takes
fire; when cool, they crown it with a _bonnet rouge_.” Memorable
also be that nimble Barber, who when the bomb burst beside him,
snatched up a shred of it, introduced soap and lather into it,
crying, ‘_Voilà mon plat à barbe_, My new shaving-dish!’ and
shaved “fourteen people” on the spot. Bravo, thou nimble Shaver;
worthy to shave old spectral Redcloak, and find treasures!—On the
eighth day of this desperate siege, the sixth day of October,
Austria finding it fruitless, draws off, with no pleasurable
consciousness; rapidly, Dumouriez tending thitherward; and Lille
too, black with ashes and smoulder, but jubilant skyhigh, flings
its gates open. The _Plat à barbe_ became fashionable; “no
Patriot of an elegant turn,” says Mercier several years
afterwards, “but shaves himself out of the splinter of a Lille
bomb.”
_Quid multa_, Why many words? The Invaders are in flight;
Brunswick’s Host, the third part of it gone to death, staggers
disastrous along the deep highways of Champagne; spreading out
also into “the fields, of a tough spongy red-coloured clay;—like
Pharaoh through a Red Sea of mud,” says Goethe; “for he also lay
broken chariots, and riders and foot seemed sinking around.”[566]
On the eleventh morning of October, the World-Poet, struggling
Northwards out of Verdun, which he had entered Southwards, some
five weeks ago, in quite other order, discerned the following
Phenomenon and formed part of it:
“Towards three in the morning, without having had any sleep, we
were about mounting our carriage, drawn up at the door; when an
insuperable obstacle disclosed itself: for there rolled on
already, between the pavement-stones which were crushed up into a
ridge on each side, an uninterrupted column of sick-wagons
through the Town, and all was trodden as into a morass. While we
stood waiting what could be made of it, our Landlord the Knight
of Saint-Louis pressed past us, without salutation.” He had been
a Calonne’s Notable in 1787, an Emigrant since; had returned to
his home, jubilant, with the Prussians; but must now forth again
into the wide world, “followed by a servant carrying a little
bundle on his stick.
“The activity of our alert Lisieux shone eminent; and, on this
occasion too, brought us on: for he struck into a small gap of
the wagon-row; and held the advancing team back till we, with our
six and our four horses, got intercalated; after which, in my
light little coachlet, I could breathe freer. We were now under
way; at a funeral pace, but still under way. The day broke; we
found ourselves at the outlet of the Town, in a tumult and
turmoil without measure. All sorts of vehicles, few horsemen,
innumerable foot-people, were crossing each other on the great
esplanade before the Gate. We turned to the right, with our
Column, towards Estain, on a limited highway, with ditches at
each side. Self-preservation, in so monstrous a press, knew now
no pity, no respect of aught. Not far before us there fell down a
horse of an ammunition-wagon: they cut the traces, and let it
lie. And now as the three others could not bring their load
along, they cut them also loose, tumbled the heavy-packed vehicle
into the ditch; and, with the smallest retardation, we had to
drive on, right over the horse, which was just about to rise; and
I saw too clearly how its legs, under the wheels, went crashing
and quivering.
“Horse and foot endeavoured to escape from the narrow laborious
highway into the meadows: but these too were rained to ruin;
overflowed by full ditches, the connexion of the footpaths every
where interrupted. Four gentlemanlike, handsome, well-dressed
French soldiers waded for a time beside our carriage; wonderfully
clean and neat: and had such art of picking their steps, that
their foot-gear testified no higher than the ancle to the muddy
pilgrimage these good people found themselves engaged in.
“That under such circumstances one saw, in ditches, in meadows,
in fields and crofts, dead horses enough, was natural to the
case: by and by, however, you found them also flayed, the fleshy
parts even cut away; sad token of the universal distress.
“Thus we fared on; every moment in danger, at the smallest
stoppage on our own part, of being ourselves tumbled overboard;
under which circumstances, truly, the careful dexterity of our
Lisieux could not be sufficiently praised. The same talent shewed
itself at Estain; where we arrived towards noon; and descried,
over the beautiful well-built little Town, through streets and on
squares, around and beside us, one sense-confusing tumult: the
mass rolled this way and that; and, all struggling forward, each
hindered the other. Unexpectedly our carriage drew up before a
stately house in the market-place; master and mistress of the
mansion saluted us in reverent distance.” Dexterous Lisieux,
though we knew it not, had said we were the King of Prussia’s
Brother!
“But now, from the ground-floor windows, looking over the whole
market-place, we had the endless tumult lying, as it were,
palpable. All sorts of walkers, soldiers in uniform, marauders,
stout but sorrowing citizens and peasants, women and children,
crushed and jostled each other, amid vehicles of all forms:
ammunition-wagons, baggage-wagons; carriages, single, double, and
multiplex; such hundredfold miscellany of teams, requisitioned or
lawfully owned, making way, hitting together, hindering each
other, rolled here to right and to left. Horned-cattle too were
struggling on; probably herds that had been put in requisition.
Riders you saw few; but the elegant carriages of the Emigrants,
many-coloured, lackered, gilt and silvered, evidently by the best
builders, caught your eye.[567]
“The crisis of the strait however arose further on a little;
where the crowded market-place had to introduce itself into a
street,—straight indeed and good, but proportionably far too
narrow. I have, in my life, seen nothing like it: the aspect of
it might perhaps be compared to that of a swoln river which has
been raging over meadows and fields, and is now again obliged to
press itself through a narrow bridge, and flow on in its bounded
channel. Down the long street, all visible from our windows,
there swelled continually the strangest tide: a high
double-seated travelling-coach towered visible over the flood of
things. We thought of the fair Frenchwomen we had seen in the
morning. It was not they, however, it was Count Haugwitz; him you
could look at, with a kind of sardonic malice, rocking onwards,
step by step, there.”[568]
In such untriumphant Procession has the Brunswick Manifesto
issued! Nay in worse, “in Negotiation with these miscreants,”—the
first news of which produced such a revulsion in the Emigrant
nature, as put our scientific World-Poet “in fear for the wits of
several.”[569] There is no help: they must fare on, these poor
Emigrants, angry with all persons and things, and making all
persons angry, in the hapless course they struck into. Landlord
and landlady testify to you, at _tables-d’hôte_, how
insupportable these Frenchmen are: how, in spite of such
humiliation, of poverty and probable beggary, there is ever the
same struggle for precedence, the same forwardness, and want of
discretion. High in honour, at the head of the table, you with
your own eyes observe not a Seigneur but the automaton of a
Seigneur, fallen into dotage; still worshipped, reverently waited
on, and fed. In miscellaneous seats, is a miscellany of soldiers,
commissaries, adventurers; consuming silently their barbarian
victuals. “On all brows is to be read a hard destiny; all are
silent, for each has his own sufferings to bear, and looks forth
into misery without bounds.” One hasty wanderer, coming in, and
eating without ungraciousness what is set before him, the
landlord lets off almost scot-free. ‘He is,’ whispered the
landlord to me, ‘the first of these cursed people I have seen
condescend to taste our German black bread.’[570]
And Dumouriez is in Paris; lauded and feasted; paraded in
glittering saloons, floods of beautifullest blond-dresses and
broadcloth-coats flowing past him, endless, in admiring joy. One
night, nevertheless, in the splendour of one such scene, he sees
himself suddenly apostrophised by a squalid unjoyful Figure, who
has come in _un_invited, nay despite of all lackeys; an unjoyful
Figure! The Figure is come ‘in express mission from the
Jacobins,’ to inquire sharply, better then than later, touching
certain things: ‘Shaven eyebrows of Volunteer Patriots, for
instance?’ Also ‘your threats of shivering in pieces?’ Also, ‘why
you have not chased Brunswick hotly enough?’ Thus, with sharp
croak, inquires the Figure.—‘_Ah, c’est vous qu’on appelle
Marat_, You are he they call Marat!’ answers the General, and
turns coldly on his heel.[571]—‘Marat!’ The blonde-gowns quiver
like aspens; the dress-coats gather round; Actor Talma (for it is
his house), and almost the very chandelier-lights, are blue: till
this obscene Spectrum, or visual Appearance, vanish back into
native Night.
General Dumouriez, in few brief days, is gone again, towards the
Netherlands; will attack the Netherlands, winter though it be.
And General Montesquiou, on the South-East, has driven in the
Sardinian Majesty; nay, almost without a shot fired, has taken
Savoy from him, which longs to become a piece of the Republic.
And General Custine, on the North-East, has dashed forth on
Spires and its Arsenal; and then on Electoral Mentz, not
uninvited, wherein are German Democrats and no shadow of an
Elector now:—so that in the last days of October, Frau Forster, a
daughter of Heyne’s, somewhat democratic, walking out of the Gate
of Mentz with her Husband, finds French Soldiers playing at bowls
with cannon-balls there. Forster trips cheerfully over one iron
bomb, with ‘Live the Republic!’ A black-bearded National Guard
answers: ‘_Elle vivra bien sans vous_, It will probably live
independently of you!’[572]