VALMY
“Bury my heart in Valmy,” said Kellerman, soldier of the Seven
Years’ War, victor of Valmy, Marshal of France under the first
Napoleon, and court favorite of the Bourbons--as the shadows of
old-age death deepened into darkness. And they buried his heart in
Valmy.
A simple monument on the crest of the hill, the bloodiest spot of
the one-time battle ground, tells to the thoughtful stranger the
story of a restless heart o’er whom as o’er Madame de Stael and
many another heir of a checkered heritage might be engraved as
epitaph, “Here rests one who never rested.”
The era ushered in by the battle of Valmy was especially prolific
of men whose political principles changed violently from one
extreme to the other; only to rebound again and again, until, at
length, weariness and cynic scorn of good in anything caused them
to drift in perplexed acquiescence wherever the tide rolled longest
and strongest. Talleyrand, Dumouriez, Marquis de la Rouarie,
Kellerman, La Fayette, Mirabeau, Duc de Chartres, and even Napoleon
Bonaparte were, in great measure, moulded into their respective
historic moulds by the lurid lightning play of antithetic forces
ever fatefully flashing and slashing and crashing around them.
SEPTEMBER TWENTIETH.
Yet in August, 1792, when sixty thousand Prussians, and forty
thousand Austrians and fifteen thousand of the old French
_noblesse_ started out upon that “military promenade to Paris”:
or on the morning of September 20th, when that victoriously
advancing column prepared gaily for its first skirmish with the
raw revolutionary levies who filled the passes of the Argonne
wooded heights and threatened to impede that “promenade”--who could
see, or who could dare to dream what the issue of that encounter
would be; what results would follow; what rivers of blood would
flow; what lordly heads would roll from under the guillotine; what
national madness would break out barking at the peace of Europe;
what mighty Madman would arise urging on that national madness even
to Wagram, Austerlitz, Moscow, Leipsic, Waterloo!
RETRIBUTION.
Had Kellerman failed to come up just in time to join forces
with Dumouriez: had the Prussian advance been just an hour or
two earlier: had the heavy mists lifted from the Valmy hill
and Argonne wood revealing the relative positions of Kellerman
and Dumouriez: had the forcing of the defile by Clairfayt and
his Austrian corps proved fatally successful: had the Duke of
Brunswick resolutely charged a second time up that hill of
bristling bayonets: had the King of Prussia, urged on by a vision
of the future, authoritatively commanded that the hill be taken
and himself led the charge: ah! so we learnedly say from the calm
eminence far away, but history is made in the low blind fury of
the fray. Perhaps, too, there were potently at work upon that
fated battlefield, forces that elude the gaze of the dreamer on
the height far away:--a determining animus, moral and spiritual
potencies formed by the slow centuries and long controlled, but
now liberated and wildly free. Ghosts of ten thousand wrongs may
have arisen between the gilded ranks of the French _noblesse_ and
the ragged rows of the Carmagnoles: and, as the spirits that arose
over the tent of Richard the Third, the night before the battle
of Bosworth Field, cursed Richard and blessed Richmond; threatened
Richard with defeat and death on the morrow and cheered Richmond
with hopes and promises of victory; fought intangibly, invisibly,
yet potently present amid the awful carnage of Bosworth field
even until death trampled down Richard: so, in like manner, may
the ghosts of ten thousand wrongs have arisen between the men of
the old _regime_ and of the rebellious new--fighting for their
fellow-wrongs still writhing in the flesh, fighting the old, old
fight of retaliation, compensation, stern adjudication, infinite
justice. As the sun’s rays that reach earth are but one-millionth
of the rays emitted by the sun, so for every thing known, bright
shining on the historic page, there are a million things unknown.
BATTLE.
About seven o’clock on that battle morn as the mists were
dissipating, the successfully united French forces saw with dismay
the slowly advancing army of the allies; long lines of Prussian
cavalry, Austrian light troops, solid columns of infantry,
batteries of artillery filled the valley and moved slowly,
sinuously toward the Valmy height.
Dumouriez anxiously scanned the white strained faces of his untried
troops. Would they fail him in the crucial hour? Would they break
away in panic rout when the death-play began? It was their custom.
“He who fights and runs away
May live to fight another day.”
At Tournay, at Lille, and in general throughout the opening
campaign this uncertain “heap of shriekers” had fled away as satyrs
pursued by Pan when the death-play began. Would the Carmagnoles of
today, and, at deepest heart, the _Jacquerie_ of many a yesterday,
dare to fight face to face and hand to hand against the august
_seigneurs_ of the old regime--late their dread lords and masters?
Three hundred years of culture lay between them.
Of all who took part in the battle that day, either among the
allies or the revolutionary forces, perhaps not one realized the
full importance of what had taken place as did Johan Wolfgang von
Goethe--then a young man and comparatively unknown; he had followed
the allies as a spectator, a curious seeker of strange scenes, a
bold hot-blood eager as his own Wilhelm Meister to taste adventure
at its source and to know the ways of the world in love and in war.
Goethe, with the unerring insight of genius, perceived that victory
to the Carmagnoles marked a new era. In his own words to comrades
in camp on the night following the battle; “From this place and
from this day forth commences a new era in the world’s history, and
you can all say you were present at its birth.”
FRANCE A REPUBLIC.
Simultaneously with victory at Valmy, France broke from the cocoon
of monarchical forms and proclaimed herself a Republic. Even while
the battle was raging, the National Convention in Paris were
engaged in this deliberation, this liberation. The Republic of
France dates from September 20th, 1792. And under the regrettable
excesses of the Revolution, the reactionary repression of the First
Empire, of the Bourbon restoration, the revolt of 1830, of 1848,
even to Sedan and the hour--the spirit of democracy, of liberty and
independence born Sept. 20th, 1792, has flourished and flourishes
indestructibly, imperishably.
And yet as Dumouriez said, “France (revolutionary) was within a
hair’s breadth of destruction.” And had victory gone that day to
the allies, the throne of Louis XVI. would have been reinstated
on foundations so firm that centuries would not shake it. For in
La Vendee and throughout Brittany there was at that time a strong
uprising in favor of the throne: men such as the admirable old
Marquis de la Rouarie were abandoning the Revolutionary cause
and turning decisively back to monarchical principles; moreover
the recent atrocious September massacres had alienated the more
conservative and thoughtful men throughout France. Never was the
time more propitious for the return of the mild and humane Louis
XVI., the re-establishment of the monarchy, the substitution of
Reform for Revolution, and of concessive peace for fratricidal war.
But by that hair’s breadth republican France won; and that winning
mustered out the gentlemanly old regime and ushered in the arrogant
awful new.
The spirit of Valmy flies eagle-free over the world today. It is
the spirit making possible the face to face and hand to hand fight
between the laborer and the capitalist, the soldier and the king,
woman and man: and that Spirit tells strange and terrible tales of
victory.