Dumouriez presents a character particularly difficult for the modern
Englishman to comprehend, so remote is it in circumstance and
fundamentals from those of our time.
Of good birth, but born in a generation when social differences had
become a jest for intelligent and active men (and he was intelligent and
active), courageous, with a good knowledge of his trade of soldiering,
of rapid decision and excellent judgment where troops or _terrain_ were
concerned, he was all at sea in the comprehension of men, and he bore no
loyalty to the State.
It is this last feature which will particularly surprise the English
reader, for it is the singular and permanent advantage of oligarchic
communities such as the British that they retain under any stress and
show throughout the whole commonwealth the sense of the State. To betray
the State, to act against its interests, to be imperfectly conscious of
its existence, are crimes or weaknesses unknown to the citizens of an
oligarchy, and a citizen of this country cannot easily conceive of them
to-day. In democracies and despotisms, on the other hand, to forget
one’s duty to the State, to be almost oblivious of its corporate
existence, is a common weakness. There is here a compensation, and by
just so much as despotism and democracy permit rapid, effective and
all-compelling action on the part of the State, by just so much as they
permit sudden and sometimes miraculous enthusiasms which save or which
confirm a State, by that also do they lack the quiet and persistent
consciousness of the State which oligarchy fosters and determines.
Dumouriez’ excellence as a general can only be appreciated by those who
have looked closely into the constitution of the forces which he was to
command and the adversaries with whom he had to deal. It is the prime
quality of a great commander that his mind stands ready for any change
in circumstances or in the material to his hand, and even when we have
allowed for the element of luck which is so considerable in military
affairs, we must not forget that Dumouriez saved without disaster the
wretched and disorganised bands, inchoate and largely mutinous as to
their old units, worthless and amateur as to their new, which had to
meet, in and behind the Argonne, the model army of Prussia.
We must not forget that his plan for the invasion of the Low Countries
was a just and sensible one, nor with what skill, after the inevitable
defeat and retreat of the spring of 1793, he saved his command intact.
As a subordinate to an armed executive, to the Government of Napoleon,
for instance, the man would have been priceless. Nay, had circumstances
permitted him to retain supreme command of civil as of military power,
he would have made no bad dictator. His mere technical skill was so
considerable as to make the large sums paid him by the English
Government seem a good bargain even at our distance of time, and his
plans for the defence of England and for the attack on Napoleon are a
proof of the value at which he was estimated.
But Dumouriez was quite unable to act under the special circumstances in
which he happened to be placed at the moment of his treason. A mere
ambition had carried him from intrigue to intrigue among the
politicians. He despised them as an active and capable soldier was
compelled to despise them; he was too old to share any of their
enthusiasms, even had his temperament permitted him to entertain any
vision, political or religious. He certainly never felt the least moral
bond attaching him to what was in his eyes the chance anarchy of the
last six months of French Government under which he served, and if he is
to be branded with the title of traitor, then we must brand with the
same title all that multitude of varied men who escaped from the country
in the Emigration, who left it in disgust, or even who remained in
France, but despaired of French fortunes, in the turmoil of 1793.
It is perhaps a worthy excuse for Dumouriez’ failure to point out that
he also was one of those whom the Court might have used had it known how
to use men; but the Court had no such knowledge.