TWO

On the 2nd of September Verdun was entered by the Prussians, and a

little outside the gates of the town, near a village bearing the name of

Regret, the allied camp was fixed. Rather more than a week later, on the

11th, the Allies marched against the line of the Argonne.

The reader will remember that this moment, with the loss of the frontier

fortresses Longwy and Verdun, and the evidence of demoralisation which

that afforded, was also the moment of the September massacres and of the

horrors in Paris. Dumouriez and the mixed French force which he

commanded had been ordered by the Ministers of War to hold the line of

the Argonne against which the Allies were marching. And here it is well

to explain what was meant in a military sense by this word “line.”

The Argonne is a long, nearly straight range of hills running from the

south northward, a good deal to the west of north.

Their soil is clay, and though the height of the hills is only three

hundred feet above the plain, their escarpment or steep side is towards

the east, whence an invasion may be expected. They are densely wooded,

from five to eight miles broad, the supply of water in them is bad, in

many parts undrinkable; habitation with its provision for armies and

roads extremely rare. It is necessary to insist upon all these details

because the greater part of civilian readers find it difficult to

understand how formidable an obstacle so comparatively unimportant a

feature in the landscape may be to an army upon the march. It was quite

impossible for the guns, the wagons, and therefore the food and the

ammunition of the invading army, to pass through the forest over the

drenched clay land of that wet autumn save where proper roads existed.

These were only to be found wherever a sort of natural pass negotiated

the range.

Three of these passes alone existed, and to this day there is very

little choice in the crossing of these hills. The accompanying sketch

will explain their disposition. Through the southernmost went the great

high road from the frontier and Verdun to Paris. At the middle one

(which is called the Gap of Grandpré) Dumouriez was waiting with his

incongruous army. The third and northern one was also held, but less

strongly. The obvious march for an unimpeded invader would have been

from Verdun along the high road, through the southern pass at “Les

Islettes,” and so to Chalôns and on to Paris. But Dumouriez, marching

down rapidly from the north, had set an advanced guard to hold that pass

and was lying himself with the mass of the army on the pass to the north

of it at Grandpré. Against Grandpré the Prussians marched, and meanwhile

the Austrians were attacking the further pass to the north. Both were

forced. Dumouriez fell back southward to St. Menehould. Meanwhile

Kellermann was coming up from Metz to join him, and all the while the

main pass at “Les Islettes,” through which the great road to Paris went,

continued to be held by the French.

[Illustration: Sketch Map, showing the turning of the positions on the

Argonne and the Cannonade at Valmy, September 1792.]

The Prussians and the Austrians joined forces in the plain known as the

Champagne Pouilleuse, which lies westward of Argonne. It will be seen

that as they marched south along this plain to meet Dumouriez and to

defeat him, their position was a peculiar one: they were nearer the

enemy’s capital than the enemy’s army was, and yet they had to fight

with their backs to that capital, and their enemy the French had to

fight with their faces towards it. Moreover, it must be remarked that

the communications of the Allied Army were now of a twisted, roundabout

sort, which made the conveyance of provisions and ammunition slow and

difficult--but they counted upon an immediate destruction of Dumouriez’

force and after that a rapid march on the capital.

On September 19 Kellermann came up from the south and joined hands with

Dumouriez near St. Menehould, and on the morning of the 20th his force

occupied a roll of land on which there was a windmill and immediately

behind which was the village of Valmy; from this village the ensuing

action was to take its name. It must here be insisted upon that both

armies had been subjected to the very worst weather for more than a

fortnight, but of the two the Prussian force had suffered from this

accident much more severely than the French. Dysentery had already

broken out, and the length and tortuousness of their communications were

greatly emphasised by the condition of the roads.

On the morning of that day, the 20th of September, a mist impeded all

decisive movements. There was an encounter, half accidental, between an

advanced French battery and the enemy’s guns, but it was not until

mid-morning that the weather lifted enough to show each force its

opponent. Then there took place an action, or rather a cannonade, the

result of which is more difficult to explain, perhaps, than any other

considerable action of the revolutionary wars. For some hours the

Prussian artillery, later reinforced by the Austrian, cannonaded the

French position, having for its central mark the windmill of Valmy,

round which the French forces were grouped. At one moment this cannonade

took effect upon the limbers and ammunition wagons of the French; there

was an explosion which all eye-witnesses have remembered as the chief

feature of the firing, and which certainly threw into confusion for some

moments the ill-assorted troops under Kellermann’s command. At what hour

this took place the witnesses who have left us accounts differ to an

extraordinary extent. Some will have it at noon, others towards the

middle of the afternoon--so difficult is it to have any accurate account

of what happens in the heat of an action. At any rate, if not

coincidently with this success, at some moment not far removed from it,

the Prussian charge was ordered, and it is here that the difficulties of

the historian chiefly appear. That charge was never carried home;

whether, as some believe, because it was discovered, after it was

ordered, to be impossible in the face of the accuracy and intensity of

the French fire, or whether, as is more probably the case, because the

drenched soil compelled the commanders to abandon the movement after it

had begun--whatever the cause may have been, the Prussian force, though

admirably disciplined and led, and though advancing in the most exact

order, failed to carry out its original purpose. It halted halfway up

the slope, and the action remained a mere cannonade without immediate

result apparent upon either side.

Nevertheless that result ultimately turned out to be very great, and if

we consider its place in history, quite as important as might have been

the result of a decisive action. In the first place, the one day’s delay

which it involved was just more than the calculations of the Allies,

with their long impeded line of communications, had allowed for. In the

next place, a singular increase in determination and moral force was

infused into the disheartened and ill-matched troops of the French

commanders by this piece of resistance.

We must remember that the French force upon the whole expected and

discounted a defeat, the private soldier especially had no confidence in

the result; and to find that at the first action which had been so long

threatened and had now at last come, he could stand up to the enemy,

produced upon him an exaggerated effect which it would never have had

under other circumstances.

Finally, we must recollect that whatever causes had forbidden the

Prussian charge forbade on the next day a general advance against the

French position. And all the time the sickness in the Prussian camp was

rapidly increasing. Even that short check of twenty-four hours made a

considerable difference. A further delay of but yet another day, during

which the Allied Army could not decide whether to attack at once or to

stand as they were, very greatly increased the list of inefficients from

illness.

For a whole week of increasing anxiety and increasing inefficiency the

Allied Army hung thus, impotent, though they were between the French

forces and the capital. Dumouriez ably entertained this hesitation, with

all its accumulating dangers for the enemy, by prolonged negotiations,

until upon the 30th of September the Prussian and Austrian organisation

could stand the strain no longer, and its commanders determined upon

retreat. It was the genius of Danton, as we now know, that chiefly

organised the withdrawal of what might still have been a dangerous

invading force. It is principally due to him that no unwise Jingoism was

permitted to claim a trial of strength with the invader, that he was

allowed to retire with all his guns, his colours and his train. The

retreat was lengthy and unmolested, though watched by the French forces

that discreetly shepherded it but were kept tightly in hand from Paris.

It was more than three weeks later when the Allied Army, upon which

Europe and the French monarchy had counted for an immediate settlement

of the Revolution, re-crossed the frontier, and in this doubtful and

perhaps inexplicable fashion the first campaign of the European Powers

against the Revolution utterly failed.