"Purpurei metuunt tyranni
Injurioso ne pede proruas
Stantem columnam; neu populus frequens
Ad arma cessantes ad arma
Concitet, imperiumque frangat."
HORAT. Od. i 35.
"A little fire is quickly trodden out,
Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench."
SHAKESPEARE.
A few miles distant from the little town of St. Menehould, in the
north-east of France, are the village and hill of Valmy; and near the
crest of that hill, a simple monument points out the burial-place of
the heart of a general of the French republic, and a marshal of the
French empire.
The elder Kellerman (father of the distinguished officer of that name,
whose cavalry-charge decided the battle of Marengo) held high commands
in the French armies throughout the wars of the Convention, the
Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire. He survived those wars, and
the empire itself, dying in extreme old age in 1820. The last wish of
the veteran on his death bed was that his heart should be deposited in
the battle-field of Valmy, there to repose among the remains of his old
companions in arms, who had fallen at his side on that spot twenty-eight
years before, on the memorable day when they won the primal victory
of revolutionary France, and prevented the armies of Brunswick and
the emigrant bands of Conde from marching on defenceless Paris, and
destroying the immature democracy in its cradle.
The Duke of Valmy (for Kellerman, when made one of Napoleon's
military peers in 1802, took his title from this same battlefield) had
participated, during his long and active career, in the gaining of
many a victory far more immediately dazzling than the the one, the
remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a
scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which the
libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and
insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the
battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his
memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance,
which the new Carmagnole levies, and the disorganized relics of the old
monarchy's army, then opposed to the combined hosts and chosen leaders
of Prussia, Austria, and the French refugee noblesse, determined at
once and for ever the belligerent character of the revolution. The raw
artisans and tradesmen, the clumsy burghers, the base mechanics and low
peasant churls, as it had been the fashion to term the middle and
lower classes in France, found that they could face cannon-balls, pull
triggers, and cross bayonets, without having been drilled into military
machines, and without being officered by scions of noble houses. They
awoke to the consciousness of their own instinctive soldiership. They
at once acquired confidence in themselves and in each other; and that
confidence soon grew into a spirit of unbounded audacity and ambition.
"From the cannonade of Valmy may be dated the commencement of that
career of victory which carried their armies to Vienna and the Kremlin."
[Alison.]
One of the gravest reflections that arises from the contemplation of the
civil restlessness and military enthusiasm which the close of the last
century saw nationalised in France, is the consideration that these
disturbing influences have become perpetual. No settled system of
government, that shall endure from generation to generation, that shall
be proof against corruption and popular violence, seems capable of
taking root among the French. And every revolutionary movement in Paris
thrills throughout the rest of the world. Even the successes which the
powers allied against France gained in 1814 and 1815, important as they
were, could not annul the effects of the preceding twenty-three years of
general convulsion and war.
In 1830, the dynasty which foreign bayonets had imposed on France was
shaken off; and men trembled at the expected outbreak of French anarchy
and the dreaded inroads of French ambition. They "looked forward with
harassing anxiety to a period of destruction similar to that which the
Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century of our
era." [See Niebuhr's Preface to the second volume of the "History of
Rome," written in October 1830.] Louis Philippe cajoled revolution, and
then strove with seeming success to stifle it. But in spite of Fieschi
laws, in spite of the dazzle of Algerian razzias and Pyrenees-effacing
marriages, in spite of hundreds of armed forts, and hundreds of
thousands of coercing troops, Revolution lived, and struggled to get
free. The old Titan spirit heaved restlessly beneath "the monarchy based
on republican institutions." At last, four years ago, the whole fabric
of kingcraft was at once rent and scattered to the winds, by the
uprising of the Parisian democracy; and insurrections, barricades and
dethronements, the downfall of coronets and crowns, the armed collisions
of parties, systems, and populations, became the commonplaces of recent
European history.
France now calls herself a republic. She first assumed that title on the
20th of September, 1792, on the very day on which the battle of Valmy
was fought and won. To that battle the democratic spirit which in
1848, as well as in 1792, proclaimed the Republic in Paris, owed its
preservation, and it is thence that the imperishable activity of its
principles may be dated.
Far different seemed the prospects of democracy in Europe on the eve of
that battle; and far different would have been the present position and
influence of the French nation, if Brunswick's columns had charged with
more boldness, or the lines of Dumouriez resisted with less firmness.
When France, in 1792, declared war with the great powers of Europe, she
was far from possessing that splendid military organization which the
experience of a few revolutionary campaigns taught her to assume, and
which she has never abandoned. The army of the old monarchy had, during
the latter part of the reign of Louis XV. sunk into gradual decay,
both in numerical force, and in efficiency of equipment and spirit. The
laurels gained by the auxiliary regiments which Louis XVI. sent to the
American war, did but little to restore the general tone of the army.
The insubordination and licence, which the revolt of the French guards,
and the participation of other troops in many of the first excesses
of the Revolution introduced among the soldiery, were soon rapidly
disseminated through all the ranks. Under the Legislative Assembly
every complaint of the soldier against his officer, however frivolous
or ill-founded, was listened to with eagerness, and investigated with
partiality, on the principles of liberty and equality. Discipline
accordingly became more and more relaxed; and the dissolution of several
of the old corps, under the pretext of their being tainted with an
aristocratic feeling, aggravated the confusion and inefficiency of the
war department. Many of the most effective regiments during the last
period of the monarchy had consisted of foreigners. These had either
been slaughtered in defence of the throne against insurrections, like
the Swiss; or had been disbanded, and had crossed the frontier to
recruit the forces which were assembling for the invasion of France.
Above all, the emigration of the noblesse had stripped the French army
of nearly all its officers of high rank, and of the greatest portion
of its subalterns. More than twelve thousand of the high-born youth
of France, who had been trained to regard military command as their
exclusive patrimony, and to whom the nation had been accustomed to look
up as its natural guides and champions in the storm of war; were now
marshalled beneath the banner of Conde and the other emigrant princes,
for the overthrow of the French armies, and the reduction of the French
capital. Their successors in the French regiments and brigades had
as yet acquired neither skill nor experience: they possessed neither
self-reliance nor the respect of the men who were under them.
Such was the state of the wrecks of the old army; but the bulk of the
forces with which France began the war, consisted of raw insurrectionary
levies, which were even less to be depended on. The Carmagnoles, as the
revolutionary volunteers were called, flocked, indeed, readily to the
frontier from every department when the war was proclaimed, and the
fierce leaders of the Jacobins shouted that the country was in danger.
They were full of zeal and courage, "heated and excited by the scenes of
the Revolution, and inflamed by the florid eloquence, the songs, dances,
and signal-words with which it had been celebrated." [Scott, Life of
Napoleon, vol. i c. viii.] But they were utterly undisciplined, and
turbulently impatient of superior authority, or systematical control.
Many ruffians, also, who were sullied with participation in the most
sanguinary horrors of Paris, joined the camps, and were pre-eminent
alike for misconduct before the enemy and for savage insubordination
against their own officers. On one occasion during the campaign of
Valmy, eight battalions of federates, intoxicated with massacre and
sedition, joined the forces under Dumouriez, and soon threatened to
uproot all discipline, saying openly that the ancient officers were
traitors, and that it was necessary to purge the army, as they had
Paris, of its aristocrats. Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from
the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces
of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at
the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff, and an escort of a
hundred hussars. "Fellows," said he, "for I will not call you either
citizens or soldiers, you see before you this artillery, behind you
this cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here
assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels amongst you
charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from amongst you, or denounce
them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct."
[Lamartine.]
One of our recent historians of the Revolution, who narrates this
incident, [Carlyle.] thus apostrophises the French general:--
"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 barebacked,
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."
Such phalanxed masses of fighters did the Carmagnoles ultimately become;
but France ran a fearful risk in being obliged to rely on them when the
process of their transmutation had barely commenced.
The first events, indeed, of the war were disastrous and disgraceful to
France, even beyond what might have been expected from the chaotic state
in which it found her armies as well as her government. In the hopes of
profiting by the unprepared state of Austria, then the mistress of the
Netherlands, the French opened the campaign of 1792 by an invasion of
Flanders, with forces whose muster-rolls showed a numerical overwhelming
superiority to the enemy, and seemed to promise a speedy conquest of
that old battle-field of Europe. But the first flash of an Austrian
sabre, or the first sound of Austrian gun, was enough to discomfit the
French. Their first corps, four thousand strong, that advanced from
Lille across the frontier, came suddenly upon a far inferior detachment
of the Austrian garrison of Tournay. Not a shot was fired, not a bayonet
levelled. With one simultaneous cry of panic the French broke and
ran headlong back to Lille, where they completed the specimen of
insubordination which they had given in the field, by murdering their
general and several of their chief officers. On the same day, another
division under Biron, mustering ten thousand sabres and bayonets, saw
a few Austrian skirmishers reconnoitering their position. The French
advanced posts had scarcely given and received a volley, and only a few
balls from the enemy's field-pieces had fallen among the lines, when two
regiments of French dragoons raised the cry, "We are betrayed," galloped
off, and were followed in disgraceful rout by the rest of the whole
army. Similar panics, or repulses almost equally discreditable, occurred
whenever Rochambeau, or Luckner, or La Fayette, the earliest French
generals in the war, brought their troops into the presence of the
enemy.
Meanwhile, the allied sovereigns had gradually collected on the Rhine
a veteran and finely-disciplined army for the invasion of France, which
for numbers, equipment, and martial renown, both of generals and men,
was equal to any that Germany had ever sent forth to conquer. Their
design was to strike boldly and decisively at the heart of France, and
penetrating the country through the Ardennes, to proceed by Chalons upon
Paris. The obstacles that lay in their way seemed insignificant. The
disorder and imbecility of the French armies had been even augmented by
the forced flight of La Fayette, and a sudden change of generals. The
only troops posted on or near the track by which the allies were about
to advance, were the twenty-three thousand men at Sedan, whom La Fayette
had commanded, and a corps of twenty thousand near Metz, the command of
which had just been transferred from Luckner to Kellerman. There were
only three fortresses which it was necessary for the allies to capture
or mask--Sedan, Longwy, and Verdun. The defences and stores of these
three were known to be wretchedly dismantled and insufficient; and when
once these feeble barriers were overcome, and Chalons reached, a fertile
and unprotected country seemed to invite the invaders to that "military
promenade to Paris," which they gaily talked of accomplishing.
At the end of July the allied army, having completed all preparations
for the campaign, broke up from its cantonments, and marching from
Luxembourg upon Longwy, crossed the French frontier. Eighty thousand
Prussians, trained in the school, and many of them under the eye of
the Great Frederick, heirs of the glories of the Seven Years' War, and
universally esteemed the best troops in Europe, marched in one column
against the central point of attack. Forty-five thousand Austrians, the
greater part of whom were picked troops, and had served in the recent
Turkish war, supplied two formidable corps that supported the flanks of
the Prussians. There was also a powerful body of Hessians, and leagued
with the Germans against the Parisian democracy, came fifteen thousand
of the noblest and bravest amongst the sons of France. In these corps
of emigrants, many of the highest born of the French nobility, scions
of houses whose chivalric trophies had for centuries filled Europe with
renown, served as rank and file. They looked on the road to Paris as the
path which they were to carve out by their swords to victory, to honour,
to the rescue of their king, to reunion with their families, to the
recovery of their patrimony, and to the restoration of their order. [See
Scott, Life of Napoleon, vol. i. c. xi.]
Over this imposing army the allied sovereigns placed as generalissimo
the Duke of Brunswick, one of the minor reigning princes of Germany, a
statesman of no mean capacity, and who had acquired in the Seven Years'
War, a military reputation second only to that of the Great Frederick
himself. He had been deputed a few years before to quell the popular
movements which then took place in Holland; and he had put down
the attempted revolution in that country with a promptitude and
completeness, which appeared to augur equal success to the army that now
marched under his orders on a similar mission into France.
Moving majestically forward, with leisurely deliberation, that seemed
to show the consciousness of superior strength, and a steady purpose of
doing their work thoroughly, the Allies appeared before Longwy on the
20th of August, and the dispirited and dependent garrison opened the
gates of that fortress to them after the first shower of bombs. On
the 2d of September the still more important stronghold of Verdun
capitulated after scarcely the shadow of resistance.
Brunswick's superior force was now interposed between Kellerman's troops
on the left, and the other French army near Sedan, which La Fayette's
flight had, for the time, left destitute of a commander. It was in the
power of the German general, by striking with an overwhelming mass to
the right and left, to crush in succession each of these weak armies,
and the allies might then have marched irresistible and unresisted upon
Paris. But at this crisis Dumouriez, the new commander-in-chief of
the French, arrived at the camp near Sedan, and commenced a series of
movements, by which he reunited the dispersed and disorganized forces
of his country, checked the Prussian columns at the very moment when the
last obstacles of their triumph seemed to have given way, and finally
rolled back the tide of invasion far across the enemy's frontier.
The French fortresses had fallen; but nature herself still offered
to brave and vigorous defenders of the land, the means of opposing a
barrier to the progress of the Allies. A ridge of broken ground, called
the Argonne, extends from the vicinity of Sedan towards the south-west
for about fifteen or sixteen leagues, The country of L'Argonne has now
been cleared and drained; but in 1792 it was thickly wooded, and the
lower portions of its unequal surface were filled with rivulets and
marshes. It thus presented a natural barrier of from four to five
leagues broad, which was absolutely impenetrable to an army, except by a
few defiles, such as an inferior force might easily fortify and defend.
Dumouriez succeeded in marching his army down from Sedan behind the
Argonne, and in occupying its passes, while the Prussians still lingered
on the north-eastern side of the forest line. Ordering Kellerman to
wheel round from Metz to St. Menehould, and the reinforcements from the
interior and extreme north also to concentrate at that spot, Dumouriez
trusted to assemble a powerful force in the rear of the south-west
extremity of the Argonne, while, with the twenty-five thousand men under
his immediate command, he held the enemy at bay before the passes, or
forced him to a long circumvolution round one extremity of the forest
ridge, during which, favourable opportunities of assailing his flank
were almost certain to occur. Dumouriez fortified the principal defiles,
and boasted of the Thermopylae which he had found for the invaders; but
the simile was nearly rendered fatally complete for the defending force.
A pass, which was thought of inferior importance, had been but slightly
manned, and an Austrian corps under Clairfayt, forced it after some
sharp fighting. Dumouriez with great difficulty saved himself from being
enveloped and destroyed by the hostile columns that now pushed through
the forest. But instead of despairing at the failure of his plans,
and falling back into the interior, to be completely severed from
Kellerman's army, to be hunted as a fugitive under the walls of Paris
by the victorious Germans, and to lose all chance of ever rallying his
dispirited troops, he resolved to cling to the difficult country in
which the armies still were grouped, to force a junction with Kellerman,
and so to place himself at the head of a force, which the invaders would
not dare to disregard, and by which he might drag them back from the
advance on Paris, which he had not been able to bar. Accordingly, by a
rapid movement to the south, during which, in his own words, "France was
within a hair's-breadth of destruction," and after, with difficulty,
checking several panics of his troops in which they ran by thousands at
the sight of a few Prussian hussars, Dumouriez succeeded in establishing
his head-quarters in a strong position at St. Menehould, protected by
the marshes and shallows of the river Aisne and Aube, beyond which, to
the north-west, rose a firm and elevated plateau, called Dampierre's
Camp, admirably situated for commanding the road by Chalons to Paris,
and where he intended to post Kellerman's army so soon as it came
up. [Some late writers represent that Brunswick did not wish to check
Dumouriez. There is no sufficient authority for this insinuation, which
seems to have been first prompted by a desire to soothe the wounded
military pride of the Prussians.]
The news of the retreat of Dumouriez from the Argonne passes, and of the
panic flight of some divisions of his troops, spread rapidly throughout
the country; and Kellerman, who believed that his comrade's army had
been annihilated, and feared to fall among the victorious masses of the
Prussians, had halted on his march from Metz when almost close to
St. Menehould. He had actually commenced a retrograde movement, when
couriers from his commander-in-chief checked him from that fatal course;
and then continuing to wheel round the rear and left flank of the troops
at St. Menehould, Kellerman, with twenty thousand of the army of Metz,
and some thousands of volunteers who had joined him in the march,
made his appearance to the west of Dumouriez, on the very evening
when Westerman and Thouvenot, two of the staff-officers of Dumouriez,
galloped in with the tidings that Brunswick's army had come through
the upper passes of the Argonne in full force, and was deploying on the
heights of La Lune, a chain of eminences that stretch obliquely from
south-west to north-east opposite the high ground which Dumouriez held,
and also opposite, but at a shorter distance from, the position which
Kellerman was designed to occupy.
The Allies were now, in fact, nearer to Paris than were the French
troops themselves; but, as Dumouriez had foreseen, Brunswick deemed it
unsafe to march upon the capital with so large a hostile force left in
his rear between his advancing columns and his base of operations. The
young King of Prussia, who was in the allied camp, and the emigrant
princes, eagerly advocated an instant attack upon the nearest French
general. Kellerman had laid himself unnecessarily open, by advancing
beyond Dampierre's Camp, which Dumouriez had designed for him, and
moving forward across the Aube to the plateau of Valmy, a post inferior
in strength and space to that which he had left, and which brought him
close upon the Prussian lines, leaving him separated by a dangerous
interval from the troops under Dumouriez himself. It seemed easy for the
Prussian army to overwhelm him while thus isolated, and then they might
surround and crush Dumouriez at their leisure.
Accordingly, the right wing of the allied army moved forward, in the
grey of the morning of the 20th of September, to gain Kellerman's left
flank and rear, and cut him off from retreat upon Chalons, while
the rest of the army, moving from the heights of La Lune, which here
converge semi-circularly round the plateau of Valmy, were to assail
his position in front, and interpose between him and Dumouriez. An
unexpected collision between some of the advanced cavalry on each side
in the low ground, warned Kellerman of the enemy's approach. Dumouriez
had not been unobservant of the danger of his comrade, thus isolated and
involved; and he had ordered up troops to support Kellerman on either
flank in the event of his being attacked. These troops, however, moved
forward slowly; and Kellerman's army, ranged on the plateau of Valmy,
"projected like a cape into the midst of the lines of the Prussian
bayonets." [See Lamartine, Hist. Girond. livre xvii. I have drawn much
of the ensuing description from him.] A thick autumnal mist floated in
waves of vapour over the plains and ravines that lay between the two
armies, leaving only the crests and peaks of the hills glittering in the
early light. About ten o'clock the fog began to clear off, and then
the French from their promontory saw emerging from the white wreaths
of mist, and glittering in the sunshine, the countless Prussian cavalry
which were to envelops them as in a net if once driven from their
position, the solid columns of the infantry that moved forward as if
animated by a single will, the bristling batteries of the artillery,
and the glancing clouds of the Austrian light troops, fresh from their
contests with the Spahis of the east.
The best and bravest of the French must have beheld this spectacle with
secret apprehension and awe. However bold and resolute a man may be in
the discharge of duty, it is an anxious and fearful thing to be called
on to encounter danger among comrades of whose steadiness you can feel
no certainty. Each soldier of Kellerman's army must have remembered the
series of panic routs which had hitherto invariably taken place on the
French side during the war; and must have cast restless glances to
the right and left, to see if any symptoms of wavering began to show
themselves, and to calculate how long it was likely to be before a
general rush of his comrades to the rear would either harry him off with
involuntary disgrace, or leave him alone and helpless, to be cut down by
assailing multitudes.
On that very morning, and at the self-same hour, in which the allied
forces and the emigrants began to descend from La Lune to the attack of
Valmy, and while the cannonade was opening between the Prussian and the
Revolutionary batteries, the debate in the National Convention at Paris
commenced on the proposal to proclaim France a Republic.
The old monarchy had little chance of support in the hall of the
Convention; but if its more effective advocates at Valmy had triumphed,
there were yet the elements existing in France for a permanent revival
of the better part of the ancient institutions, and for substituting
Reform for Revolution. Only a few weeks before, numerously signed
addresses from the middle classes in Paris, Rouen, and other large
cities, had been presented to the king, expressive of their horror of
the anarchists, and their readiness to uphold the rights of the crown,
together with the liberties of the subject. And an armed resistance
to the authority of the Convention, and in favour of the king, was in
reality at this time being actively organized in La Vendee and Brittany,
the importance of which may be estimated from the formidable opposition
which the Royalists of these provinces made to the Republican party, at
a later period, and under much more disadvantageous circumstances. It is
a fact peculiarly illustrative of the importance of the battle of Valmy,
that "during the summer of 1792, the gentlemen of Brittany entered into
an extensive association for the purpose of rescuing the country from
the oppressive yoke which had been imposed by the Parisian demagogues.
At the head of the whole was the Marquis de la Rouarie, one of those
remarkable men who rise into pre-eminence during the stormy days of
a revolution, from conscious ability to direct its current. Ardent,
impetuous, and enthusiastic, he was first distinguished in the American
war, when the intrepidity of his conduct attracted the admiration of
the Republican troops, and the same qualities rendered him at first an
ardent supporter of the Revolution in France; but when the atrocities of
the people began, he espoused with equal warmth the opposite side, and
used the utmost efforts to rouse the noblesse of Brittany against the
plebeian yoke which had been imposed upon them by the National Assembly.
He submitted his plan to the Count d'Artois, and had organized one so
extensive, as would have proved extremely formidable to the Convention,
if the retreat of the Duke of Brunswick, in September 1792, had not
damped the ardour of the whole of the west of France, then ready to
break out into insurrection." [Alison, vol. iii. p. 323.]
And it was not only among the zealots of the old monarchy that the cause
of the king would then have found friends. The ineffable atrocities of
the September massacres had just occurred, and the reaction produced
by them among thousands who had previously been active on the
ultra-democratic side, was fresh and powerful. The nobility had not yet
been made utter aliens in the eyes of the nation by long expatriation
and civil war. There was not yet a generation of youth educated in
revolutionary principles, and knowing no worship-save that of military
glory, Louis XVI. was just and humane, and deeply sensible of the
necessity of a gradual extension of political rights among all classes
of his subjects. The Bourbon throne, if rescued in 1792, would have had
chances of stability, such as did not exist for it in 1814, and seem
never likely to be found again in France.
Serving under Kellerman on that day was one who experienced, perhaps
the most deeply of all men, the changes for good and for evil which the
French Revolution has produced. He who, in his second exile, bore the
name of the Count de Neuilly in this country, and who lately was Louis
Philippe, King of the French, figured in the French lines at Valmy, as
a young and gallant officer, cool and sagacious beyond his years, and
trusted accordingly by Kellerman and Dumouriez with an important station
in the national army. The Duc de Chartres (the title he then bore)
commanded the French right, General Valence was on the left, and
Kellerman himself took his post in the centre, which was the strength
and key of his position.
Besides these celebrated men, who were in the French army, and besides
the King of Prussia, the Duke of Brunswick, and other men of rank and
power, who were in the lines of the Allies, there was an individual
present at the battle of Valmy, of little political note, but who has
exercised, and exercises, a greater influence over the human mind, and
whose fame is more widely spread, than that of either duke, or general,
or king. This was the German poet, Goethe, who had, out of curiosity,
accompanied the allied army on its march into France as a mere
spectator. He has given us a curious record of the sensations which
he experienced during the cannonade. It must be remembered that
many thousands in, the French ranks then, like Goethe, felt the
"cannon-fever" for the first time. The German poet says, [Goethe's
Campaign in France in 1792. Farie's translation, p.77.]--
"I had heard so much of the cannon-fever, that I wanted to know what
kind of thing it was. ENNUI, and a spirit which every kind of danger
excites to daring, nay even to rashness, induced me to ride up quite
coolly to the outwork of La Lune. This was again occupied by our people;
but it presented the wildest aspect. The roofs were shot to pieces;
the corn-shocks scattered about, the bodies of men mortally wounded
stretched upon them here and there; and occasionally a spent cannon-ball
fell and rattled among the ruins of the the roofs.
"Quite alone, and left to myself, I rode away on the heights to the
left, and could plainly survey the favourable position of the French;
they were standing in the form of a semicircle in the greatest quiet and
security; Kellerman, then on the left wing, being the easiest to reach.
"I fell in with good company on the way, officers of my acquaintance,
belonging to the general staff and the regiment, greatly surprised to
find me here. They wanted to take me back again with them; but I spoke
to them of particular objects I had in view, and they left me without
further dissuasion, to my well-known singular caprice.
"I had now arrived quite in the region where the balls were playing
across me: the sound of them is curious enough, as if it were composed
of the humming of tops, the gurgling of water, and the whistling of
birds. They were less dangerous, by reason of the wetness of the ground:
wherever one fell, it stuck fast. And thus my foolish experimental ride
was secured against the danger at least of the balls rebounding.
"In the midst of these circumstances, I was soon able to remark that
something unusual was taking place within me. I paid close attention
to it, and still the sensation can be described only by similitude. It
appeared as if you were in some extremely hot place, and, at the same
time, quite penetrated by the heat of it, so that you feel yourself,
as it were, quite one with the element in which you are. The eyes lose
nothing of their strength or clearness; but it is as if the world had
a kind of brown-red tint, which makes the situation, as well as the
surrounding objects, more impressive. I was unable to perceive any
agitation of the blood; but everything seemed rather to be swallowed up
in the glow of which I speak. From this, then, it is clear in what sense
this condition can be called a fever. It is remarkable, however, that
the horrible uneasy feeling arising from it is produced in us solely
through the ears; for the cannon-thunder, the howling and crashing of
the balls through the air, is the real cause of these sensations.
"After I had ridden back, and was in perfect security, I remarked
with surprise that the glow was completely extinguished, and not
the slightest feverish agitation was left behind. On the whole, this
condition is one of the least desirable; as, indeed, among my dear and
noble comrades, I found scarcely one who expressed a really passionate
desire to try it."
Contrary to the expectations of both friends and foes, the French
infantry held their ground steadily under the fire of the Prussian guns,
which thundered on them from La Lune; and their own artillery replied
with equal spirit and greater effect on the denser masses of the
allied army. Thinking that the Prussians were slackening in their fire,
Kellerman formed a column in charging order, and dashed down into the
valley, in the hopes of capturing some of the nearest guns of the enemy.
A masked battery opened its fire on the French column, and drove it back
in disorder. Kellerman having his horse shot under him, and being with
difficulty carried off by his men. The Prussian columns now advanced in
turn. The French artillerymen began to waver and desert their posts,
but were rallied by the efforts and example of their officers; and
Kellerman, reorganizing the line of his infantry, took his station in
the ranks on foot, and called out to his men to let the enemy come close
up, and then to charge them with the bayonet. The troops caught the
enthusiasm of their general, and a cheerful shout of VIVE LA NATION!
taken by one battalion from another, pealed across the valley to the
assailants. The Prussians flinched from a charge up-hill against a force
that seemed so resolute and formidable; they halted for a while in the
hollow, and then slowly retreated up their own side of the valley.
Indignant at being thus repulsed by such a foe, the King of Prussia
formed the flower of his men in person, and, riding along the column,
bitterly reproached them with letting their standard be thus humiliated.
Then he led them on again to the attack marching in the front line,
and seeing his staff mowed down around him by the deadly fire which the
French artillery re-opened. But the troops sent by Dumouriez were now
co-operating effectually with Kellerman, and that general's own men,
flushed by success, presented a firmer front than ever. Again the
Prussians retreated, leaving eight hundred dead behind, and at nightfall
the French remained victors on the heights of Valmy.
All hopes of crushing the revolutionary armies, and of the promenade to
Paris, had now vanished, though Brunswick lingered long in the Argonne,
till distress and sickness wasted away his once splendid force,
and finally but a mere wreck of it recrossed the frontier. France,
meanwhile, felt that she possessed a giant's strength, and like a giant
did she use it. Before the close of that year, all Belgium obeyed the
National Convention at Paris, and the kings of Europe, after the lapse
of eighteen centuries, trembled once more before a conquering military
Republic.
Goethe's description of the cannonade has been quoted. His observation
to his comrades in the camp of the Allies, at the end of the battle,
deserves citation also. It shows that the poet felt (and, probably, he
alone of the thousands there assembled felt) the full importance of that
day. He describes the consternation and the change of demeanour which he
observed among his Prussian friends that evening, he tells us that "most
of them were silent; and, in fact, the power of reflection and judgment
was wanting to all. At last I was called upon to say what I thought of
the engagement; for I had been in the habit of enlivening and amusing
the troop with short sayings. This time I said: 'FROM THIS PLACE, AND
FROM THIS DAY FORTH, COMMENCES A NEW ERA IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY, AND YOU
CAN ALL SAY THAT YOU WERE PRESENT AT ITS BIRTH.'"
SYNOPSIS OP EVENTS BETWEEN THE BATTLE OF VALMY, 1792, AND THE BATTLE OF
WATERLOO, 1815.
A.D. 1793. Trial and execution of Louis XVI. at Paris. England and Spain
declare war against France. Royalist war in La Vendee. Second invasion
of France by the Allies.
1794. Lord Howe's victory over the French fleet. Final partition of
Poland by Russia, Prussia, and Austria.
1795. The French armies under Pichegru, conquer Holland. Cessation of
the war in La Vendee.
1796. Bonaparte commands the French army of Italy and gains repeated
victories over the Austrians.
1797. Victory of Jervis, off Cape St. Vincent. Peace of Campo Formio
between France and Austria. Defeat of the Dutch off Camperdown by
Admiral Duncan.
1798. Rebellion in Ireland. Expedition of the French under Bonaparte to
Egypt. Lord Nelson destroys the French fleet at the Battle of the Nile.
1799. Renewal of the war between Austria and France. The Russian
emperor sends an army in aid of Austria, under Suwarrow. The French are
repeatedly defeated in Italy. Bonaparte returns from Egypt and makes
himself First Consul of France. Massena wins the battle of Zurich. The
Russian emperor makes peace with France.
1800. Bonaparte passes the Alps and defeats the Austrians at Marengo.
Moreau wins the battle of Hohenlinden.
1801. Treaty of Luneville between France and Austria. The battle of
Copenhagen.
1802. Peace of Amiens.
1803. War between England and France renewed.
1804. Napoleon Bonaparte is made Emperor of France.
1805. Great preparations of Napoleon to invade England. Austria,
supported by Russia, renews war with France. Napoleon marches into
Germany, takes Vienna, and gains the battle of Austerlitz. Lord Nelson
destroys the combined French and Spanish fleets, and is killed at the
battle of Trafalgar.
1806. War between Prussia and France, Napoleon conquers Prussia in the
battle of Jena.
1807. Obstinate warfare between the French and Russian armies in East
Prussia and Poland. Peace of Tilsit.
1808. Napoleon endeavours to make his brother King of Spain. Rising
of the Spanish nation against him. England sends troops to aid the
Spaniards. Battles of Vimiera and Corunna.
1809. War renewed between France and Austria. Battles of Asperne and
Wagram. Peace granted to Austria. Lord Wellington's victory of Talavera,
in Spain.
1810. Marriage of Napoleon and the Arch-duchess Maria Louisa. Holland
annexed to France.
1812. War between England and the United States. Napoleon invades
Russia. Battle of Borodino. The French occupy Moscow, which is burned.
Disastrous retreat and almost total destruction of the great army of
France.
1813. Prussia and Austria take up arms again against France. Battles of
Lutzen, Bautzen, Dresden, Culm, and Leipsic. The French are driven out
of Germany. Lord Wellington gains the great battle of Vittoria, which
completes the rescue of Spain from France.
1814. The Allies invade France on the eastern, and Lord Wellington
invades it on the southern frontier. Battles of Laon, Montmirail,
Arcis-sur-Aube, and others in the north-east of France; and of Toulouse
in the south. Paris surrenders to the Allies, and Napoleon abdicates.
First restoration of the Bourbons. Napoleon goes to the isle of Elba,
which is assigned to him by the Allies. Treaty of Ghent, between the
United States and England.
1815. Napoleon suddenly escapes from Elba, and lands in France. The
French soldiery join him and Louis XVIII. is obliged to fly from the
throne.