_Election of Representatives for the National
Convention--Jacobins are very active--Right hand Party--Left
hand side--Neutral Members--The Girondists are in possession of
the ostensible Power--They denounce the Jacobin Chiefs, but in
an irregular and feeble manner--Marat, Robespierre, and Danton,
supported by the Commune and Populace of Paris--France declared
a Republic--Duke of Brunswick's Campaign--Neglects the French
Emigrants--Is tardy in his Operations--Occupies the poorest part
of Champagne--His Army becomes sickly--Prospects of a
Battle--Dumouriez's Army recruited with Carmagnoles--The Duke
resolves to Retreat--Thoughts on the consequences of that
measure--The Retreat disastrous--The Emigrants disbanded in a
great measure--Reflections on their Fate--The Prince of Condé's
Army._
[Sidenote: NATIONAL CONVENTION.]
It was, of course, the object of each party to obtain the greatest
possible majority in the National Convention now to be assembled, for
arranging upon some new footing the government of France, and for
replacing that Constitution to which faith had been so repeatedly sworn.
The Jacobins made the most energetic exertions. They not only wrote
missives through their two thousand affiliated societies, but sent three
hundred commissaries, or delegates, to superintend the elections in the
different towns and departments; to exhort their comrades not only to be
firm, but to be enterprising; and to seize with strong hand the same
power over the public force, which the mother society possessed in
Paris. The advice was poured into willing ears; for it implied the
sacred right of insurrection, with the concomitant privileges of pillage
and slaughter.
The power of the Jacobins was irresistible in Paris, where Robespierre,
Danton, and Marat, who shared the high places in their synagogue, were
elected by an immense majority;[293] and of the twenty deputies who
represented Paris, there were not above five or six unconnected with the
massacres. Nor were they any where unsuccessful, where there existed
enough of their adherents to overawe by threats, clamour, and violence,
the impartial voice of the public.
But in every state there is a great number of men who love order for
itself, and for the protection it affords to property. There were also a
great many persons at heart Royalists, either pure or constitutional,
and all these united in sending to the National Convention deputies,
who, if no opportunity occurred of restoring the monarchy, might at
least co-operate with the Girondists and more moderate Republicans in
saving the life of the unfortunate Louis, and in protecting men's lives,
and property in general, from the infuriate violence of the Jacobins.
These supporters of order--we know no better name to assign to
them--were chiefly representatives of the departments, where electors
had more time to discriminate and reflect, than when under the influence
of the revolutionary societies and clubs of the towns. Yet Nantes,
Bourdeaux, Marseilles, Lyons, and other towns, chiefly in the west and
south, were disposed to support the Girondists, and sent deputies
favourable to their sentiments. Thus the Convention, when assembled,
still presented the appearance of two strong parties; and the feebleness
of that, which, being moderate in its views, only sought to act
defensively consisted not in want of numbers, but in want of energy.
It was no good omen, that, on taking their places in the Assembly, these
last assumed the Right Side; a position which seemed doomed to defeat,
since it had been successively occupied by the suppressed parties of
moderate Royalists and Constitutionalists. There was defeat in the very
sound of the _parti droit_, whereas the left-hand position had always
been that of victory. Men's minds are moved by small incidents in
dubious times. Even this choice of seats made an impression upon
spectators and auditors unfavourable to the Girondists, as all naturally
shrink from a union with bad fortune. There was a considerable party of
neutral members, who, without joining themselves to the Girondists,
affected to judge impartially betwixt the contending parties. They were
chiefly men of consciences too timid to go all the lengths of the
Jacobins, but also of too timid nerves to oppose them openly and boldly.
These were sure to succumb on all occasions, when the Jacobins judged it
necessary to use their favourite argument of popular terror.
The Girondists took possession, however, of all ostensible marks of
power. Danton was dismissed from his place as minister of justice; and
they were, as far as mere official name and title could bestow it on
them, in possession of the authority of government. But the ill-fated
regulation which excluded ministers from seats in the Assembly, and
consequently from any right save that of defence, proved as fatal to
those of the new system, as it had done to the executive government of
Louis.
[Sidenote: FRANCE DECLARED A REPUBLIC.]
Our remarks upon the policy of the great change from Monarchy to a
Republic, will be more in place elsewhere.[294] Indeed, violent as the
change sounded in words, there was not such an important alteration in
effect as to produce much sensation. The Constitution of 1791 was a
democracy to all intents and purposes, leaving little power with the
King, and that little subject to be so much cramped and straitened in
its operation, that the royal authority was even smaller in practice
than it had been limited in theory. When to this is added, that Louis
was a prisoner amongst his subjects, acting under the most severe
restraint, and endangering his life every time he attempted to execute
his constitutional power, he must long have been held rather an
incumbrance on the motions and councils of the state, than as one of its
efficient constituted authorities. The nominal change of the system of
government scarcely made a greater alteration in the internal condition
of France, than the change of a sign makes upon a house of
entertainment, where the business of the tavern is carried on in the
usual way, although the place is no longer distinguished as the King's
Head.
[Sidenote: DUKE OF BRUNSWICK'S CAMPAIGN.]
While France was thus alarmed and agitated within, by change, by crime,
by the most bitter political factions, the dawn of that course of
victory had already risen on the frontiers, which, in its noonday
splendour, was to blaze fiercely over all Europe. It is not our purpose
to detail military events at present; we shall have but too many of them
to discuss hereafter. We shall barely state, that the Duke of
Brunswick's campaign, considered as relative to his proclamation, forms
too good an illustration of the holy text, "Pride goeth before
destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." The duke was at the
head of a splendid army, which had been joined by fifteen thousand
emigrants in the finest state of equipment, burning with zeal to rescue
the King, and avenge themselves on those by whom they had been driven
from their country. From what fatality it is hard to conceive, but the
Duke of Brunswick seems to have looked with a certain degree of coldness
and suspicion on those troops, whose chivalrous valour and high birth
called them to the van, instead of the rear, in which the generalissimo
was pleased to detain them. The chance of success that might justly have
been expected from the fiery energy which was the very soul of French
chivalry, from the fear which such an army might have inspired, or
perhaps from the friends whom they might have found, was altogether
lost. There was something in this extraordinary conduct, which almost
vindicated the suspicion, that Prussia was warring on her own account,
and was not disposed to owe too much of the expected success to the
valour of the emigrants. And it escaped not the remark, both of the
emigrants and the French at large, that Longwy and Verdun were
ostentatiously taken possession of by the allies, not under the name of
the King of France, or the Comte d'Artois, but in that of the Emperor;
which appeared to give colour to the invidious report, that the allies
were to be indemnified for the cost of their assistance, at the expense
of the French line of frontier towns. Neither did the duke use his fine
army of Prussians, or direct the motions of the Austrians under
Clairfait, to any greater advantage. He had, indeed, the troops of the
Great Frederick; but under the command of an irresolute and incapable
leader, it was the sword of Scanderbeg in the hands of a boy.
This tardiness of the Duke of Brunswick's movements intimated a latent
doubt of his own capacity to conduct the campaign. The superiority of
his veteran and finely disciplined forces over the disorganized army of
Dumouriez, reinforced as it was by crowds of Federates, who were perfect
strangers to war, would have been best displayed by bold and rapid
movements, evincing at once activity and combination, and alarming raw
troops by a sense of danger, not in front alone, but on every point.
Each day which these new soldiers spent unfought, was one step towards
military discipline, and what is more, towards military confidence. The
general who had threatened so hard, seemed to suspend his blow in
indecision; and he remained trifling on the frontiers, "when Frederick,
had he been in our front," said the French general, "would long since
have driven us back upon Chalons."[295]
The result of so many false steps began soon to appear. Brunswick, whose
army was deficient in battering guns, though entering France on a
frontier of fortifications, was arrested by the obstinate defence of
Thionville. Having at length decided to advance, he spent nine days in
marching thirty leagues, but omitted to possess himself of the defiles
of Argonnes, by which alone the army of Luckner could co-operate with
that of Dumouriez. The allied general now found himself in the most
elevated part of the province of Champagne, branded for its poverty and
sterility with the unseemly name "La Champagne Pouilleuse," where he
found difficulty to subsist his army. Meantime, if corn and forage were
scarce, grapes and melons were, unfortunately, plenty. These last fruits
are so proverbially unwholesome, that the magistrates of Liege, and some
other towns, forbid the peasants to bring them to market under pain of
confiscation. It was the first time such delicacies had been presented
to the hyperborean appetites of the Prussians; and they could not resist
the temptation, though the same penalty was annexed to the banquet, as
to that which produced the first transgression. They ate and died. A
fatal dysentery broke out in the camp, which swept the soldiers away by
hundreds in a day, sunk the spirits of the survivors, and seems to have
totally broken the courage of their commander.[296]
Two courses remained to the embarrassed general. One was, to make his
way by giving battle to the French, by attacking them in the strong
position which they had been permitted to occupy, notwithstanding the
ease with which they might have been anticipated. It is true, Dumouriez
had been very strongly reinforced. France, from all her departments, had
readily poured forth many thousands of her fiery youth, from city and
town, village and grange and farm, to protect the frontiers, at once,
from the invasion of foreigners, and the occupation of thousands of
vengeful emigrants. They were undisciplined, indeed, but full of zeal
and courage, heated and excited by the scenes of the republic, and
inflamed by the florid eloquence, the songs, dances, and signal-words
with which it had been celebrated. Above all, they were of a country,
which, of all others in Europe, has been most familiar with war, and the
youth of which are most easily rendered amenable to military discipline.
But to these new levies the Duke of Brunswick might have safely opposed
the ardent valour of the emigrants, men descended of families whose
deeds of chivalry fill the registers of Europe; men by whom the road to
Paris was regarded as that which was to conduct them to victory, to
honour, to the rescue of their King, to reunion with their families, to
the recovery of their patrimony; men accustomed to consider disgrace as
more dreadful by far than death, and who claimed as their birth-right,
military renown and the use of arms. In one skirmish, fifteen hundred of
the emigrant cavalry had defeated, with great slaughter, a column of the
Carmagnoles, as the republican levies were called. They were routed with
great slaughter, and their opponents had the pleasure to count among the
slain a considerable number of the assassins of September.
But the French general had more confidence in the Carmagnole levies,
from which his military genius derived a valuable support, than
Brunswick thought proper to repose in the chivalrous gallantry of the
French noblesse. He could only be brought to engage in one action, of
artillery, near Valmy, which was attended with no marked consequence,
and then issued his order for a retreat. It was in vain that the Comte
d'Artois, with a spirit worthy of the line from which he was descended,
and the throne to which he has now succeeded, entreated, almost
implored, a recall of this fatal order; in vain that he offered in
person to head the emigrant forces, and to assume with them the most
desperate post in the battle, if the generalissimo would permit it to be
fought. But the duke, obstinate in his desponding in proportion to his
former presumption, was not of that high mind which adopts hazardous
counsels in desperate cases. He saw his army mouldering away around him,
beheld the French forming in his rear, knew that the resources of
Prussia were unequal to a prolonged war, and, after one or two feeble
attempts to negotiate for the safety of the captive Louis, he was at
length contented to accept an implied permission to retreat without
molestation. He raised his camp on the 29th of September,[297] and left
behind him abundant marks of the dreadful state to which his army was
reduced.[298]
When we look back on these events, and are aware of Dumouriez's real
opinions, and the interest which he took in the fate of the King, we
have little reason to doubt, that the Duke of Brunswick might, by active
and prompt exertions, have eluded that general's defensive measures;
nay, that judicious negotiation might have induced him, on certain
points being conceded, to have united a part at least of his forces with
those of the emigrants in a march to Paris, for the King's rescue, and
the punishment of the Jacobins.
But had the restoration of Louis XVI. taken place by the armed hand of
the emigrants and the allies, the final event of the war must still have
been distant. Almost the whole body of the kingdom was diametrically
opposed to the restoration of the absolute monarchy, with all its evils;
and yet it must have been the object of the emigrants, in case of
success, again to establish, not only royalty in its utmost prerogative,
but all the oppressive privileges and feudal subjections which the
Revolution had swept away. Much was to have been dreaded too, from the
avidity of the strangers, whose arms had assisted the imprisoned Louis,
and much more from what has since been aptly termed the Reaction, which
must have taken place upon a counter-revolution. It was greatly to be
apprehended, that the emigrants, always deeming too lightly of the ranks
beneath them, incensed by the murder of their friends, and stung by
their own private wrongs and insults, would, if successful, have treated
the Revolution not as an exertion of the public will of France to free
the country from public grievances, but as a _Jacquerie_, (which in some
of its scenes it too much resembled,) a domestic treason of the vassals
against their liege lords. It was the will of Providence, that the
experience of twenty years and upwards should make manifest, that in the
hour of victory itself, concessions to the defeated, as far as justice
demands them, is the only mode of deriving permanent and secure peace.
[Sidenote: EMIGRANT REGIMENTS DISBANDED.]
The retreat of the Prussians was executed in the best possible order,
and in the most leisurely manner. But if to them it was a measure of
disgrace, it was to the unfortunate emigrants who had joined their
standard, the signal of utter despair and ruin. These corps were
composed of gentlemen, who, called suddenly and unprovided from their
families and homes, had only brought with them such moderate sums of
money as could be raised in an emergency, which they had fondly
conceived would be of very brief duration. They had expended most of
their funds in providing themselves with horses, arms, and
equipments--some part must have been laid out in their necessary
subsistence, for they served chiefly at their own expense--and perhaps,
as might have been expected among high-spirited and high-born youths,
their slender funds had not been managed with an economical view of the
possibility of the reverses which had taken place. In the confusion and
disorder of the retreat, their baggage was plundered by their
auxiliaries, that is to say, by the disorderly Prussian soldiers, who
had shaken loose all discipline; and they were in most cases reduced for
instant maintenance to sell their horses at such paltry prices as they
could obtain. To end the history of such of this devoted army as had
been engaged in the Duke of Brunswick's campaign, they were disbanded at
Juliers, in November 1792.
The blindness of the sovereigns, who, still continuing a war on France,
suffered such fine troops to be dissolved for want of the means of
support, was inexcusable; their cold and hard-hearted conduct towards a
body of gentlemen, who, if politically wrong, were at least devoted to
the cause for which Austria asserted that she continued in arms, was
equally unwise and ungenerous. These gallant gentlemen might have
upbraided the Kings who had encouraged, and especially the general who
led, this ill-fated expedition, in the words of Shakspeare, if he had
been known to them,--
"Hast thou not spoke like thunder on our side,
Been sworn our soldier--bidding us depend
Upon thy stars, thy fortune, and thy strength?"[299]
But the reproaches of those who have no remedy but the exposition of
their wrongs, seldom reach the ears of the powerful by whom these wrongs
have been committed.
It is not difficult to conceive the agony with which these banished
gentlemen abandoned all hopes of saving the life of their King, and the
recovery of their rank and fortune. All their proud vaunts of expected
success were lost, or converted into serpents to sting them. They had no
hope before them, and, what is worst to men of high spirit, they had
fallen with scarce a blow struck for honour, far less for victory. They
were now doomed, such as could, to exercise for mere subsistence the
prosecution of sciences and arts, which they had cultivated to adorn
prosperity--to wander in foreign lands, and live upon the precarious
charity of foreign powers, embittered every where by the reflections of
some, who pitied the folly that could forfeit rank and property for a
mere point of honour; and of others, who saw in them the enemies of
rational liberty, and upbraided them with the charge, that their
misfortunes were the necessary consequence of their arbitrary
principles.
It might have in some degree mitigated their calamity, could some gifted
sage have shown them, at such distance as the Legislator of Israel
beheld the Promised Land from Mount Pisgah, the final restoration of the
royal house, in whose cause they had suffered shipwreck of their all.
But how many perished in the wilderness of misfortune which
intervened--how few survived the twenty years wandering which conducted
to this promised point! and of those few, who, war-worn and wearied by
misfortunes, survived the restoration of royalty, how very few were
rewarded by more than the disinterested triumph which they felt on that
joyful occasion! and how many might use the simile of a royalist of
Britain on a similar occasion,--"The fleece of Gideon remained dry,
while the hoped-for restoration shed showers of blessing on all France
beside!"
The emigrant regiments under the command of the Prince of Condé had
another and nobler fate. They retained their arms, and signalized
themselves by their exertions; were consumed by the sword, and in toils
of service, and died at least the death of soldiers, mourned, and not
unrevenged. But they were wasting their devoted courage in the service
of foreigners; and if their gallantry was gratified by the defeat of
those whom they regarded as the murderers of their king and as usurpers
of their rights, they might indeed feel that their revenge was satiated,
but scarce in any sense could they regard their victories as serviceable
to the cause to which they had sacrificed their country, their
possessions, their hopes, their lives. Their fate, though on a much more
extensive scale, much resembles that of the officers of the Scottish
army in 1690, who, following the fortunes of James II. to France, were
at length compelled to form themselves into a battalion of privates,
and, after doing many feats of gallantry in the service of the country
where they found refuge, at length melted away under the sword of the
enemy, and the privations of military service. History, while she is
called upon to censure or commend the actions of mankind according to
the rules of immutable justice, is no less bound to lament the brave and
generous, who, preferring the dictates of honourable feeling to those of
prudence, are hurried into courses which may be doubtful in policy, and
perhaps in patriotism, but to which they are urged by the disinterested
wish of discharging what they account a conscientious duty. The
emigrants were impolitic, perhaps, in leaving France, though that
conduct had many apologies; and their entrance into their country in
arms to bring back the despotic system, which Louis XVI. and the whole
nation, save themselves, had renounced, was an enterprise unwisely and
unjustly undertaken. But the cause they embraced was one dear to all the
prejudices of the rank and sentiments in which they had been brought up;
their loyal purpose in its defence is indisputable; and it would be hard
to condemn them for following one extreme, when the most violent and
tyrannical proceedings were, in the sight of all Europe, urging another,
so bloody, black, and fatal as that of the faction which now domineered
in Paris, and constrained men, whose prejudices of birth or education
were in favour of freedom, to loathe the very name of France, and of the
Revolution.
The tame and dishonourable retreat of the Duke of Brunswick and his
Prussians, naturally elated the courage of a proud and martial people.
Recruits flowed into the Republican ranks from every department; and the
generals, Custine on the Rhine, and Montesquiou on the side of Savoy,
with Dumouriez in the Netherlands, knew how to avail themselves of these
reinforcements, which enabled them to assume the offensive on all parts
of the extensive south-eastern frontier of France.
[Sidenote: ATTACK OF SAVOY.]
The attack of Savoy, whose sovereign, the King of Sardinia, was
brother-in-law of the Comte d'Artois, and had naturally been active in
the cause of the Bourbons, was successfully commenced, and carried on by
General Montesquiou already mentioned, a French noble, and an aristocrat
of course by birth, and as it was believed by principle, but to whom,
nevertheless, the want of experienced leaders had compelled the ruling
party at Paris to commit the command of an army. He served them well,
possessed himself of Nice and Chamberi, and threatened even Italy.[300]
On the centre of the same line of frontier, Custine, an excellent
soldier and a fierce republican, took Spires, Oppenheim, Worms, finally
the strong city of Mentz, and spread dismay through that portion of the
Germanic empire. Adopting the republican language of the day, he
thundered forth personal vengeance, denounced in the most broad and
insulting terms, against such princes of the Germanic body as had
distinguished themselves by zeal against the Revolution; and, what was
equally formidable, he preached to their subjects the flattering and
exciting doctrines of the Republicans, and invited them to join in the
sacred league of the oppressed people against princes and magistrates,
who had so long held over them a usurped power.[301]
But the successes of Dumouriez were of a more decided and more grateful
character to the ruling men in the Convention. He had a heavier task
than either Custine or Montesquiou; but his lively and fertile
imagination had already devised modes of conquest with the imperfect
means he possessed. The difference between commanders is the same as
between mechanics. A workman of commonplace talents, however expert
custom and habit may have made him in the use of his ordinary tools, is
at a loss when deprived of those which he is accustomed to work with.
The man of invention and genius finds out resources, and contrives to
make such implements as the moment supplies answer his purpose, as well,
and perhaps better, than a regular chest of working utensils. The ideas
of the ordinary man are like a deep-rutted road, through which his
imagination moves slowly, and without departing from the track; those of
the man of genius are like an avenue, clear, open, and smooth, on which
he may traverse as occasion requires.
Dumouriez was a man of genius, resource, and invention. Clairfait, who
was opposed to him, a brave and excellent soldier, but who had no idea
of strategie or tactics, save those current during the Seven Years' War.
The former knew so well how to employ the fire and eagerness of his
Carmagnoles, of whose blood he was by no means chary, and how to
prevent the consequences of their want of discipline, by reserves of his
most steady and experienced troops, that he gave Clairfait a signal
defeat at Jemappes, on the 6th November, 1792.[302]
It was then that both Austria and Europe had reason to regret the absurd
policy of Joseph II., both in indisposing the inhabitants towards his
government, and, in the fine provinces of the Austrian Netherlands,
dismantling the iron girdle of fortified towns, with which the wisdom of
Europe had invested that frontier. Clairfait, who, though defeated, was
too good a disciplinarian to be routed, had to retreat on a country
unfriendly to the Austrians, from recollection of their own recent
insurrection, and divested of all garrison towns; which must have been
severe checks, particularly at this period, to the incursion of a
revolutionary army, more fitted to win battles by its impetuosity, than
to overcome obstacles which could only be removed by long and patient
sieges.
As matters stood, the battle of Jemappes was won, and the Austrian
Netherlands were fully conquered without further combat by the French
general. We shall leave him in his triumph, and return to the fatal
scenes acting in Paris.
FOOTNOTES:
[293] Among others of the same party thus elected were David, the
painter, Camille Desmoulins, Collot d'Herbois, and the Duke of Orleans,
who had abdicated his titles, and was now called Philip Egalité.--See
THIERS, tom. iii., p. 133.
[294] "The first measure of the Convention was to abolish Monarchy and
proclaim a Republic. The calendar was changed; it was no longer the
fourth year of Liberty, but the first of the French Republic."--MIGNET,
tom. i., p. 212.
[295] Dumouriez, vol. ii., p. 387.
[296] Jomini, tom. ii., p. 133.
[297] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 63; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 138.
[298] "All the villages were filled with dead and the dying; without any
considerable fighting, the allies had lost, by dysentery and fevers,
more than a fourth of their numbers."--TOULONGEON, tom. ii., p. 357.
[299] King John, act iii., sc. i.
[300] Botta, tom. i., p. 88; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 190.
[301] Thiers, tom. iii., p. 182; Jomini, tom. ii., p. 151.
[302] Dumouriez, vol. iii., p. 169; Toulongeon, tom. iii., p. 47;
Jomini, tom. ii., p. 217.