"So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays,
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shadowy lustre o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."
I leave it to others to give the history of this campaign, one of the most
memorable of Europe from its consequences--the tramp of that army roused
the slumbering giant of France. If the Frenchman said of a battle, that it
was like a ball-room, you see little beyond your opposite partner; he
might have said of a campaign, that you scarcely see even so much. The
largeness of the scale is beyond all personal observation. I can answer
only for myself, that I was on horseback before daybreak, and marched in
the midst of columns which had no more doubt of beating up the enemy's
quarters than they had of eating their first meal. All were in the highest
spirits; and the opinions of the staff, among whom the duke had assigned
me a place, were so sanguine, that I felt some concern at their reaching
the ear of the captive aide-de-camp. This induced me to draw him away
gradually from the crowd. I found him lively, as his countrymen generally
are, but exhibiting at once a strength of observation and a frankness of
language which are more uncommon.
"I admit," said he, "that you have beaten us; but this is the natural
effect of your incomparable discipline. Our army is new, our general new,
every thing new but our imprudence, in venturing to meet your 100,000 with
our 25,000. Yet France is not beaten. In fact, you have not met the French
up to this hour."
"What!" I exclaimed in surprise; "of what nation are the troops which we
have fought in the Argonne, and are now following through the high-road to
Paris? The Duke of Brunswick will be amused by hearing that he has been
wasting his cannon-shot on spectres."
"Ah, you English," he replied with a broad laugh, which made me still more
doubt his nation, "are such matter-of-fact people, that you require
substance in every thing. But what are the troops of France? Brave fellows
enough, but not one of them has ever seen a shot fired in his life; even
the few battalions which we had in America saw nothing but hedge-firing.
The men before you have never seen more service than they could find in a
cabaret, or hunting a highwayman. Some of them, I admit, have served their
King in the shape of shouldering their muskets at his palace gates in
Versailles, or marching in a procession of cardinals and confessors to
Notre-Dame. My astonishment is, that at the first shot they did not all
run to their soup, and at the second leave their muskets to take care of
themselves. But they are brave; and, if they once learn to fight, the
pupils will beat the master."
"You are a philosopher, Monsieur, but, I hope, no prophet. I think I
observe in you something of our English blood after all. You have opinions,
and speak them."
"Not quite English, nor quite French. My father was a borderer; so not
even exactly either English or Scotch. He took up arms for the son of
James--of course was ruined, as every one was who had to do with Stuart
from the beginning of time--luckily escaped after the crash of Culloden,
entered the Scottish Brigade here, and left to me nothing but his memory,
his sword, and the untarnished name of Macdonald." I bowed to a name so
connected with honour, and the lively aide-de-camp and I became from that
moment, fast friends. After a long and fatiguing march, about noon, in one
of the most sultry days of a British autumn, our advanced guard reached
the front of the enemy's position. The outposts were driven in at once,
and the whole army, as it came up, was formed in order of battle. Rumours
had been spread of large reinforcements being on their way; and the clouds
of dust which rose along the plain, and the confused sound of
baggage-wagons, and heavy guns behind the hills, rendered it probable.
Still the country before us was clear to the eye, and our whole force
moved slowly forward to storm a range of heights, in the shape of a
half-moon, which commanded the field. This was one of the sights which
nothing but war can furnish, and to which no other sight on earth is equal.
The motion, the shouts, the rapidity of all things--the galloping of the
cavalry--the rolling of the parks of artillery--the rush of the light
troops--the pressing march of the battalions--and all glittering with all
the pomps of war, waving standards, flashing sabres, and the blaze thrown
back from the columns' bayonets, that looked like sheets of steel, made me
almost breathless. The aide-de-camp evidently enjoyed the sight as much as
myself, and gave way to that instinct, by which man is a wolf, let the
wise say what they will, and exults in war. But when he heard shots fired
from the range of hills, his countenance changed.
"There must be some mistake here," he said, with sudden gravity.
"Dumourier could never have intended to hold his position so far in
advance, and so wholly unprotected. Those troops will be lost, and the
whole campaign may be compromised."
The attack now commenced along the line, and the resistance was evidently
serious. A heavy fire was sustained for some time; but the troops
gradually established themselves on the lower part of the range. "I know
it all now!" exclaimed my agitated companion, after a long look through my
glass: "it is Kellerman's corps," said he, "which ought to have been a
league to the rear of its present position at this moment. He must have
received counter orders since I left him, or been desperately deceived;
another half hour there, and he will never leave those hills but a
prisoner or a corpse." From the shaking of his bridle, and the nervous
quivering of his manly countenance, I saw how eagerly he would have
received permission to bring the French general out of his dilemma. But he
was a man of honour, and I was sure of him. In the midst of a thunder of
cannon, which absolutely seemed to shake the ground under our feet, the
firing suddenly ceased on the enemy's side. The cessation was followed on
ours; there was an extraordinary silence over the field, and probably the
generalissimo expected a flag of truce, or some proposal for the
capitulation of the enemy's corps. But none came; and after a pause, in
which aides-de-camp and orderlies were continually galloping between the
advance and the spot where the duke stood at the head of his staff, the
line moved again, and the hill was in our possession. But Kellerman was
gone; and before our light troops could make any impression on the
squadrons which covered the movement, he had again taken up a position on
the formidable ground which was destined to figure so memorably in the
annals of French soldiership, the heights of Valmy.
"What think you now, my friend?" was my question.
"Just what I thought before," was the answer. "We want science, without
which bravery _may_ fail; but we have bravery, without which science
_must_ fail. Kellerman may have been deceived in his first position, but
he has evidently retrieved his error. He has now shortened his distance
from his reinforcements, he has secured one of the most powerful positions
in the country, and unless yon drive him out of it before nightfall, you
might as well storm Ehrenbreitstein, or your own Gibraltar, by morning."
"Well, the experiment is about to be made, for my glass shows me our
howitzers _en masse_, moving up to cannonade him with grape and canister.
He will have an uneasy bivouac of it."
"Whether Kellerman can manoeuvre, I do not know. But that he will fight, I
am perfectly sure. He is old, but one of the most daring and firm officers
in our service. If it is in his orders to maintain those heights, he will
hold them to his last cartridge and his last man."
Our conversation was now lost in the roar of artillery, and after a
tremendous fire of an hour on the French position, which was answered with
equal weight from the heights, a powerful division was sent to assail the
principal battery. The attempt was gallantly made, and the success seemed
infallible, when I heard, through all the roar, the exclamation of
Macdonald, "Brave Steingell!" At the words, he pointed to a heavy column
of infantry hurrying down the ravine in rear of the redoubt.
"Those are from the camp," he exclaimed, "and a few thousands more will
make the post impregnable."
The sight of the column seemed to have given renewed vigour to both sides;
for, while the French guns rapidly increased their fire, aided by the
musketry of the newly arrived troops, the Prussian artillerists, then the
first in Europe, threw in their balls in such showers, that the forest,
which hitherto had largely screened the enemy, began to fall in masses;
branch and trunk were swept away, and the ground became as naked of cover
as if it had been stripped by the axe. The troops thus exposed could not
withstand this "iron hail," and they were palpably staggered. The retreat
of a brigade, after suffering immense loss, shook the whole line, and
produced a charge of our dragoons up the hill. I gave an involuntary
glance at Macdonald. He was pale and exhausted; but in another moment his
eye sparkled, his colour came, and I heard him exclaim, "Bravo, Chazot!
All is not lost yet." I saw a group of mounted officers galloping into the
very spot which had been abandoned by the brigade, and followed by the
colours of three or four battalions, which were planted directly under our
fire. "There comes Chazot with his division!" cried the aide-de-camp;
"gallant fellow, let him now make up for his ill fortune! Monsieur
Brunswick will not sleep on the hill of Valmy to-night. He has been unable
to force the centre, and now both flanks are secured: another attack would
cost him ten thousand men. Nor will Monsieur Brunswick sleep on the hills
of Valmy to-morrow. Dumourier was right; there was his Thermopylæ. But it
will not be stormed. _Vive la France!_"
The prediction was nearly true. The unexpected reinforcements, and the
approach of night, determined the generalissimo to abandon the assault for
the time. The fire soon slackened, the troops were withdrawn, and, after a
heavy loss on both sides, both slept upon the field.
I was roused at midnight from the deep sleep of fatigue, by an order to
attend the duke, who was then holding a council. Varnhorst was my summoner,
and on our way he slightly explained the purpose of his mission. "We are
all in rather bad spirits at the result of to-day's action. The affair
itself was not much, as it was only between detachments, but it shows two
things; that the French are true to their revolutionary nonsense, and that
they can fight. On even ground we have beaten them, and shall beat them
again; but if Champagne gives them cover, what will it be when we get into
the broken country that lies between this and Paris? Still there has been
no rising of the people, and until then, we have nothing to fear for the
event of the campaign."
"What then have you to fear?" was my question. "What calls the council
to-night?"
"My good friend," said Varnhorst with a grave smile, which more reminded
me of Guiscard, "remember the Arab apologue, that every man is born with
two strings tied to him, one large and visible, but made of twisted
feathers; the other so fine as to be invisible, but made of twisted steel.
Thus there are few men without a visible motive, which all can see, and an
invisible one--which, however, pulls then just as the puller pleases.
Berlin pulls now, and the duke's glory and the good of Europe must be
sacrificed to policy."
"But will the king suffer this? Will the emperor stand by and see this
done?"
"They are both zealous for the liberation of the unfortunate royal family.
But, _entre nous_--and this is a secret which I scarcely dare whisper even
in a French desert--their counsellors have other ideas. Poland is the
prize to which the ministers of both courts look. They know that the
permanent possession of French provinces is impossible. It is against the
will of your great country, against the deepest request of the French king,
and against their own declarations. But Polish seizures would give them
provinces to which nobody has laid claim, and which nobody can envy. The
consequence is, that a negotiation is on foot at this moment to conclude
the war by treaty, and, having ensured the safety of the royal family, to
withdraw the army into Lorraine."
"Why am I then summoned?"
"To put your signature to the preliminaries."
I started with indignation. "They shall wait long enough if they wait till
I sign them. I shall not attend this council."
"Observe," said Varnhorst, "I have spoken only on conjecture. If I return
without you, my candour will be rewarded by an instant sentence for
Spandau."
This decided me. I shook my gallant friend by the hand, the cloud passed
from his brow, and we rode together to the council. This was of a more
formal nature than I had yet witnessed. Two officers expressly sent from
Vienna and Berlin, a kind of military envoys, had brought the decisions of
their respective cabinets upon the crisis. The duke said little. He had
lost his gay nonchalance of manners, and was palpably dispirited and
disappointed. His address to me was gracious as ever; but he was more of
the prince and the diplomatist, and less of the soldier. Our sitting
closed with a resolution, to agree upon an armistice, and to make the
immediate release of the king one of the stipulations. I combated the
proposal as long as I could with decorum. I placed, in the strongest light
that I could, the immense impulse which any pause in our advance must give
to the revolutionary spirit in France, or even in Europe--the
impossibility of relying on any negotiation which depended on the will of
the rabble--and, above all, the certainty that the first sign of tardiness
on the part of the Allies would overthrow the monarchy, which was now kept
in existence only by the dread of our arms. I was overruled. The proposal
for the armistice was signed by all present but one--that one myself. And
as we broke up silently and sullenly, at the first glimpse of a cold and
stormy dawn, the fit omen of our future fate, I saw a secretary of the
duke, accompanied by Macdonald, sent off to the headquarters of the enemy.
All was now over, and I thought of returning to my post at Paris. I spent
the rest of the day in paying parting civilities to my gallant friends,
and ordered my calèche to be in readiness by morning. But my prediction
had been only too true, though I had not calculated on so rapid a
fulfilment. The knowledge of the armistice was no sooner made
public--and, to do the French general justice, he lost neither time nor
opportunity--than it was regarded as a national triumph. The electric
change of public opinion, in this most electric of all countries, raised
the people from a condition of the deepest terror to the highest
confidence. Every man in France was a soldier, and every soldier a hero.
This was the miracle of twenty-four hours. Dumourier's force instantly
swelled to 100,000 men. He might have had a million, if he had asked for
them. The whole country became impassable. Every village poured out its
company of armed peasants; and, notwithstanding the diplomatic cessation
of hostilities, a real, universal, and desperate peasant war broke upon us
on every side.
After a week of this most harassing warfare, in which we lost ten times
the number of men which it would have cost to march over the bodies of
Dumourier's army to the capital, the order was issued for a general
retreat to the frontier. I remembered Mordecai's letter; but it was now
too late. Even if I could have turned my horse's head to a French post, I
felt myself bound to share the fortunes of the gallant army to which I had
been so closely attached. In the heat of youth, I went even further, and,
as my mission had virtually ceased, and I wore a Prussian order, I took
the _un_diplomatic step of proposing to act as one of the duke's
aides-de-camp until the army had left the enemy's territory. Behold me now,
a hulan of the duke's guard! I found no reason to repent my choice, though
our service was remarkably severe. The present war was chiefly against the
light troops and irregulars of the retreating army--the columns being too
formidable to admit of attack, at least by the multitude. Forty thousand
men, of the main army of France, were appointed to the duty of "seeing us
out of the country." But every attempt at foraging, every movement beyond
the range of our cannon, was instantly met by a peasant skirmish. Every
village approached by our squadrons, exhibited a barricade, from which we
were fired on; every forest produced a succession of sharp encounters; and
the passage of every river required as much precaution, and as often
produced a serious contest, as if we were at open war. Thus we were
perpetually on the wing, and our personal escapes were often of the most
hair-breadth kind. If we passed through a thicket, we were sure to be met
by a discharge of bullets; if we dismounted from our horses to take our
hurried and scanty meal, we found some of them shot at the inn-door; if we
flung ourselves, as tired as hounds after a chase, on the straw of a
village stable, the probability was that we were awakened by finding the
thatch in a blaze. How often we envied the easier life of the battalions!
But there an enemy, more fearful than the peasantry, began to show itself.
The weather had changed to storms of rain and bitter wind; the plains of
Champagne, never famed for fertility, were now as wild and bare as a
Russian steppe. The worst provisions, supplied on the narrowest
scale--above all, disgust, the most fatal canker of the soldier's
soul--spread disease among the ranks; and the roads on which we followed
the march, gave terrible evidence of the havoc that every hour made among
them. The mortality at last became so great, that it seemed not unlikely
that the whole army would thus melt away before it reached the boundary of
this land of death.
The horror of the scene even struck the peasantry, and whether through
fear of the contagion, or through the uselessness of hunting down men who
were treading to the grave by thousands, the peasantry ceased to follow us.
Yet such was the wretchedness of that hideous progress, that this
cessation of hostility was scarcely a relief. The animation of the
skirmishes, though it often cost life, yet kept the rest more alive; the
strategem, the adventure, the surprise, nay, even the failure and escape,
relieved us from the dreadful monotony of the life, or rather the
half-existence, to which we were now condemned. Our buoyant and brilliant
career was at an end; we were now only the mutes and mourners of a funeral
procession of seventy thousand men.
I still look back with an indescribable shudder at the scenes which we
were compelled to witness from day to day during that month of misery; for
the march, which began in the first days of October, was protracted till
its end. I had kept up my spirits when many a more vigorous frame had sunk,
and many a maturer mind had desponded; but the perpetual recurrence of the
same dreary spectacles, the dying, and the more fortunate dead, covering
the highways, the fields, and the village streets, at length sank into my
soul. Some recollections of earlier principles, and the memory of my old
friend Vincent, prevented my taking the summary and unhappy means of
ridding myself of my burden, which I saw daily resorted to among the
soldiery--a bullet through the brain, or a bayonet through the heart,
cured all. But, thanks to early impressions, I was determined to wait the
hand of the enemy, or the course of nature. Many a night I lay down beside
my starving charger, with something of a hope that I should never see
another morning; and many a morning, when I dragged my feeble limbs from
the cold and wet ground, I looked round the horizon for the approach of
some enemy's squadron, or peasant band, which might give me an honourable
chance of escape from an existence now no longer endurable. But all was in
vain. For leagues round no living object was visible, except that long
column, silently and slowly winding on through the distance, like an army
of spectres.
My diminished squadron had at length become almost the only rear-guard.
From a hundred and fifty as fine fellows as ever sat a charger, we were
now reduced to a third. All its officers, youths of the first families of
Prussia, had either been left behind dying in the villages, or had been
laid in the graves by the road-side, and I was now the only commandant.
Perhaps even this circumstance was the means of saving my life. My new
responsibility compelled me to make some exertion; and I felt that, live
or die, I might still earn an honourable name. Even in those darkest hours,
the thought that Clotilde might ask where and how I finished my
ill-fortuned career, and perhaps give a moment's sorrow to one who
remembered her to the last, had its share in restoring me to a sense of
the world. In that sort of fond frenzy, which seems so fantastic when it
is past, but so natural, and is actually so irresistible while it is in
the mind, I wrote down my feelings, wild as they were--my impossible hopes,
and a promise never to forget her while I remained in this world, and, if
there could be an intercourse between the living and the dead, in that
world to which I felt myself hastening. I then bade her a solemn and
heartfelt farewell. Placing the paper in my bosom, with a locket
containing a ringlet of her beautiful hair, which Marianne had contrived
to obtain for me, the only legacy I had to offer, I felt as if I had done
my last duty among mankind.
Still we wandered on, through a country which had the look of a boundless
cemetery. Not a peasant was met; not a sound of human labour, joy or
sorrow, reached the ear; not a smoke rose from mansion or cottage; all was
still, except when the wind burst in bitter gusts over the plain, or the
almost ceaseless rain swelled into sheets, and sent the rivers roaring
down before us. If the land had never been inhabited, or had been swept of
its inhabitants by an avenging Providence, it could not have been more
solitary. I never conceived the idea of the wilderness before. It was the
intensity of desolation.
We seemed even to make no progress. We began to think that the scene would
never change. But one evening, when the troop had lain down under the
shelter of a knoll, my sergeant, a fine Hungarian, whose eyes had been
sharpened by hussar service on the Turkish border, aroused me, saying that
he had discovered French horse-tracks in advance of us. We were all
instantly on the alert, the horse-tracks were found to be numerous, and it
was evident that a strong body of the enemy's cavalry had managed to get
in between us and the army. It is true that there was a treaty, in which
the unmolested movement of the duke was an article. But, it might have
been annulled; or the French general might have been inclined to make a
daring experiment on our worn-down battalions; or, at all events, it was
our business to keep him as far off as we could. We were on horseback
immediately. The track led us along the high-road for one or two leagues
and then turned off towards a village on a height at some distance. We now
paused, and the question was, whether to follow the enemy, or to dismount
and try to rest ourselves, and our tired horses, for the night. We had
scarcely come to the decision of unloosing girths, when the sky above the
village showed a sudden glow; and a confused clamour of voices came upon
the wind. Dispatching an orderly to the duke, to inform him of the French
movement, we rode towards the village. We found the road in its immediate
neighbourhood covered with fugitives; who, however, instead of flying from
us with the usual horror of the peasantry, threw themselves beside our
stirrups, hung on our bridles, and implored us with every wild
gesticulation to hasten to the gates. All that I could learn from the
outcries of men, women, and children, was, that their village, or rather
town--for we found it of considerable size--had been the quarters of some
of the Austrian cavalry, and that the officers had given a ball, to which
the leading families had been invited. The ball was charged as a national
crime by the democrats in Paris, and a regiment of horse had been sent to
punish the unfortunate town.
To attack such a force with fifty worn-out men, was obviously hopeless,
and my hulans, brave as they were, hung down their heads; but a fresh
concourse came rushing from the gates with even louder outcries than
before, and the words, _massacre_ and _conflagration_, were heard with
fearful emphasis. While I pondered for a moment on our want of means, a
fine old man, with his white hair stained with blood from a sabre wound in
his forehead, clung to my charger's neck, and implored me, by the honour
of soldiership, to make but one effort against the revolutionary brigands,
as he termed them. "I am a French officer and noble!" he exclaimed--"I
have served my king, I have a son in the army of Condé, and now the
wretches have seized on my only daughter, my Amalia, and they are carrying
her to their accursed guillotine." I could resist no longer; yet I looked
round despairingly at my force. "Follow me," said the agonized old man;
"one half of the villains are drunk in the cafes already, the other half
are busy in that horrid procession to the axe. I shall take you by a
private way, and you may fall upon them by surprise. You shall find me,
and all who belong to me, sword in hand by your side. Come on; and the God
of battles, and protector of the unhappy, will give you victory." He knelt
at my feet, with his hands upraised.--"For my child's sake!"--he continued
faintly to exclaim--"for my innocent child's sake!" I saw tears fall down
some of our bronzed faces, and I had but one word to utter; but that
was--"Forward!" We followed our guide swiftly and silently through the
narrow streets; and then suddenly emerging into the public square, saw
such a sight of terror as never before met my eyes.
* * * * *