night. Perhaps they had gone over to the enemy; for the atmosphere was
charged with treachery, and men were daily changing their politics
with the changing fortune of war. The next news of Hoche was that he
had fallen as if from the clouds, upon a strong Austrian position the
other side of the Vosges mountains. And the position was so strong too
that for a moment he was in danger of a second repulse. A battery on
a height made such havoc with his men that they quailed. Six hundred
francs a piece for those cannon! cried he, pointing with his sword.
It is a bargain replied one of his officers. You shall judge between
us added another as they clambered up. The battery was taken; and the
Austrians fell back on the Prussian position at Sultz where their joint
forces awaited the coming of the French. They did not wait long and
their defeat was total.
The victory was as important as decisive. The purpose of the allied
army there was to prevent the junction of Hoche and Pichegru, the
latter commanding the army of the Rhine. That junction now took place.
According to military rule Pichegru the older man and the older
officer outranked Hoche and was entitled to the chief command; but the
Convention, dazzled by the brilliancy with which Hoche had redeemed his
reputation decreed that he should have the precedence, and Pichegru
after some protest consented to serve under his boy superior.
The allies had withdrawn behind the fortifications of Landau and
Wissembourg, and so long as they were there the French frontier was
infested and nothing permanent accomplished. Hoche resolved to dislodge
them. He told his troops he had a bloody task for them: They must
storm Landau! They responded by waving their caps and shouting Landau
ou la mort, Landau or death! And it was no idle boast: Amid a scene
of sickening carnage Landau was taken and the allies disheartened did
not wait for that terrible forlorn hope to mount to the breach at
Wissembourg.
The frontier was thus cleared of enemies, and the Republic set free to
follow up that spasmodic career of conquest which brought for a moment
the continent to her feet.
Hoche now took it into his head to get married, though we cannot
imagine how he could stop fighting long enough to attend to anything
so sentimental. Perhaps he did not object to variety in his fighting.
He had met at Thionville a graceful girl who had strongly attracted
him. On inquiry he learned that her character was as commendable as her
manners, and he offered her his hand. Her family though respectable was
not wealthy, and through diffidence she hesitated. What was she that
the first soldier of France should pick her out! But her friends would
not let her miss such a chance, and they were married; and I leave you
to the chronicles which aver that she made him a good wife.
At any other epoch of the history of France, and at any epoch whatever
of the history of any other people, a young general who had encircled
his name with so much glory, would have been the idol of the nation;
but France had fallen upon strange lines. The Reign of Terror was at
its height; the Convention had turned upon itself; the Girondists,
republicans all, had gone to the scaffold; Danton the rival of
Robespierre, had fallen; and that sanguinary triumvirate Robespierre,
Saint Just and Couthon were the arbiters of life and death to all
so unfortunate as to live under the aegis of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity.
It is necessary to consider a moment the state of things under the
Terror, in order to make the rest of this story credible. Lamartine,
a republican himself, says: “More than eight thousand _suspects_
encumbered the prisons. In one night three hundred families the most
notable in France, historical, military, parliamentary, episcopal, were
arrested. No crimes were invented for them: they were guilty by the
quarter they lived in, by their rank, their fortune, their relations,
their religion, their opinions, their presumed opinions. One died for
having said what he thought; another for having held his tongue;
one for having emigrated and come back; another for having staid at
home; one for having increased the public distress by not spending his
income; another for having insulted the public distress by spending
it too lavishly. In a word there were no longer any innocent or any
guilty: there were only the proscribers and the proscribed.”
Under this fearful régime many of the truest and bravest soldiers of
France had perished: the duke of Lauzun and Biron who had fought for
us under Washington and La Fayette; the count d’Estaing who at the
same time commanded the French fleet off our coast; Custine the victor
of Mayence, and strangest of all, Houchard the victor of Honschoote.
La Fayette had saved himself by flight; so had Dumouriez the victor
of Jemappes. Some of these were proscribed because they were of noble
birth; others because, though plebeian and republican, they did not
fully come up to the standard of fanaticism then in vogue.
Robespierre and Saint Just are two of the monsters of history; yet we
cannot doubt that they were animated by what they regarded as devoted
and unselfish patriotism. They were as ready to lay down their own
lives as to take the lives of others, and they did lay them down.
They were among the best illustrations of that saying of Gibbon that
fanaticism can turn the noblest natures into beasts of prey.
Hoche had lost much of the friendship of Carnot by flouting his
authority in the matter of the commissioners, and by setting up on his
own account as an “organiser of victory.” Robespierre looked upon all
great warriors as a menace to Liberty, Equality and Fraternity; and
since the campaign of Wissembourg, Hoche was regarded as the first
of living generals. He had moreover been approached by the royalists
with the same temptation that was afterwards spread before Bonaparte,
namely, that he should undertake the rôle of General Monk, and if he
succeeded, the lofty function of Constable of France was to be revived
for him. He had scorned these offers; yet with the perversity of
human nature especially of human nature under the Terror, he was held
accountable for their having been made.
The Convention resolved to arrest him before he became too strong for
them. But did they dare seize him at the head of the troops he had led
and who adored him? The Terrorists had not only General Monk to reflect
upon but the case at their own doors of Dumouriez. When they had sent
commissioners to arrest that officer in his camp, he had ordered a file
of soldiers to seize them and deliver them over to the enemy.[17]
Hoche was a spirit of higher stamp than Dumouriez. Might he not improve
on the methods of that captain, and march at once on Paris? So they
thought best to use indirection: they lavished eulogies upon him, and
invited him to lay down his present command and accept that of the army
of Italy--a force just levied for the invasion of the Italian provinces
of the House of Austria. He readily consented to the change, for that
invasion was a favorite idea of his own. The Convention named to
succeed him in the place he was vacating, Jourdan who justified their
choice the next year by gaining the victory of Fleurus.
Hoche was completing the preparations for the campaign which another
and a greater was to lead, when a warrant came for his arrest. He made
no resistance. Perhaps resistance was useless; perhaps he considered
obedience a paramount duty; perhaps he trusted in his star and believed
they would not dare put him to death, and his star did not mislead him.
He was taken to Paris. Robespierre and Saint Just were in favor of
his immediate execution, but Couthon either from prudence or a worthy
purpose to save Hoche, pleaded that it might not be well to sacrifice
that young hero with such laurels on his brow--the people might not
take it in good part; and that it would be safer to keep him in custody
till time and the victories of others had dimmed the lustre of his
reputation. So he was put into the prison of the Concièrgerie.
To do the Terrorists justice they were not disposed to treat their
prisoners with any other cruelty than to cut their heads off; and Hoche
was allowed the consolation of writing to his wife and of receiving
her letters. He was soon joined by a young man named Thoiras of whose
imprisonment he was the innocent cause. Thoiras was a friend of the
family of Madame Hoche, and had expressed indignation at Hoche’s arrest.
To be imprisoned was to be condemned to die. No trial, no examination;
but every evening the Committee of Public Safety went over the list,
and marked off chiefly at random, as many as could be guillotined on
the morrow; and this fatal roll was read aloud each morning, in the
different prisons.
One day the name of Thoiras was called. He bade farewell to Hoche, and
drew from his pocket a watch which he begged him to keep for his sake.
That watch is still in the family of Hoche. That is to say, the last I
know of it, it belonged to the Marchioness of Roye, Hoche’s daughter;
but that lady was born about a century ago.
Among other interesting prisoners whose acquaintance Hoche made in the
Concièrgerie, were two young and charming widows whose fate proved
different from what was then threatened. One of them, instead of
having her head cut off by the guillotine, was to have it encircled
by a diadem. It was Josephine de Beauharnais. The other was already a
passive agent in a plot for the overthrow of the Terror. We shall say
more about her presently.
As fast as prisoners were led out to execution others were brought
in to take their places; and who might be the new comers was a daily
subject of mournful curiosity to those already incarcerated. One day
there were ushered into the Concièrgerie three men who caused great
amazement. Two were recognized as Saint Just and Couthon. The third had
his face bound up with a bloody napkin, but it was soon whispered about
that it was none other than the terrible Robespierre himself.
The tale has been told a thousand times: perhaps you will listen to it
the thousand and first time. One of the youngest and ablest members
of the Convention was Jean Lambert Tallien. He was not a good man: his
hand was as blood-stained as the rest. He had clamored for the death of
the king, and for the death of his co-republicans the Girondists. He
had seconded Danton in the massacres of September. He had recently been
sent to Bordeaux to see that the Terror was duly administered there,
and that an adequate number of heads fell daily in the market-place,
and he had fulfilled his mission with diabolical fidelity.
There lived in Bordeaux at that time one Madame de Fontenay whose
beauty Balzac says was one of Nature’s masterpieces. This was the
second of the two young widows whom Hoche had met in prison. I have
called her a widow but she was not quite that: she was a divorced
woman. Her husband who was a nobleman and a royalist had emigrated,
that is, had fled from the guillotine and from such fellows as Tallien.
The republic had decreed that a wife who was patriotic enough to stay
behind under such circumstances, should be entitled to a divorce;
and Madame de Fontenay who loved her country better than she loved
her husband, had availed herself of this law, and was now free. But
her name was aristocratic and her friends respectable, and in the
daily increasing barbarity of the Terror she was in great danger. As
fearless and capable as she was beautiful she resolved to meet the
peril half way. She paid a visit to Tallien and pleaded her cause
so eloquently that he assured her of his protection. He went back
to Paris, but he could not get out of his head the vision of that
appealing, resistless woman. He wrote to her and she wrote back.
He urged her to come to Paris so that he might befriend her more
effectually, and she came.
This virtuous passion seemed to work a change in that bad man. He
determined to shed no more blood; he began to hang back in the hellish
path of the Convention. Robespierre looked askance at him and soon
became an unfriend. Thinking to provoke Tallien to some rash act that
would afford a pretext for sending him to the guillotine, Robespierre
seized Madame de Fontenay and threw her in prison. Well, it did provoke
Tallien to a rash act, but it was not he who went to the guillotine.
He became the chief of a conspiracy for the destruction of the
triumvirate. He was urged forward by two of the strongest of motives:
to save his own life and to save the life of the woman he loved. The
plot spread, for every member of the Convention who differed in opinion
even unwittingly from Robespierre, was in danger of the scaffold.
On the evening of the 8th. Thermidor a month that embraced a part
of July and August, the conspirators held council. It was resolved
that in the session of the morrow Tallien should lead the attack on
Robespierre; and the rest swore by all they held sacred which was not
much, to back him to the death.
The ninth Thermidor--day big with fate--epoch in the history of the
revolution--dawned. The Convention assembled. Tallien gained the
tribune. He was an impressive speaker, and when he had fixed the
attention of the assembly he proceeded first to comment on the acts of
the triumvirate, then to criticise, then to call in question, then to
condemn, then to denounce. It was now his life or theirs and he hurled
defiance at them.
When he had done, Robespierre rose. He was evidently taken aback by
this unexpected arraignment. He made a feeble reply in which he dilated
on his own devotion to the public cause and on the heinousness of the
traitors who were turning against him. He then looked around for the
usual response: Vive la République! Vive Robespierre! Not a word. There
was dead silence. Presently a voice was heard: A bas les tyrans, down
with the tyrants! The cry was echoed and reëchoed. Tallien saw the hour
was come. He ordered the guards to arrest Robespierre, Saint Just and
Couthon. The soldiers seeing the triumvirs still calmly seated could
not believe that three men just now all powerful could be condemned,
and they hesitated. The order was repeated not only by Tallien but by
an outcry of his backers who were now a multitude; and the guards led
them forth. They took them first to the palace of the Luxembourg where
Robespierre seeing that all was lost, drew a pistol and attempted to
kill himself, but he took aim so badly that the ball merely broke his
jaw and went out at the opposite cheek. Hence the bloody napkin.
They were condemned to death by the same Committee of Public Safety
which a few days before was their pliant tool of assassination.
It was the end. The Reign of Terror was over, and all political
prisoners were set free. It was thus that Hoche and Josephine and
Madame de Fontenay recovered their liberty.
I suppose you ladies will not let me off from the rest of the love
affairs of that fascinating dame and Tallien. Well, they were married,
and Madame Tallien was one of the queens of beauty and fashion under
the Directory the Consulate and the Empire. It was in her drawing
room that Bonaparte first met Josephine. After he became emperor he
quarrelled with Madame Tallien. She was too witty and had too little
reverence for the demi-god; so he would no longer let Josephine
associate with her old friend and fellow prisoner.
Tallien lived to be old. In his last years he was supported by a small
pension granted him by Louis XVIII. whose brother Tallien had done
to death. Such was the vengeance of the House of Bourbon. And it was
another prince of that house who brought from Saint Helena the remains
of the arch-enemy of his race, and placed them in that superb tomb
under the dome of the Invalids. Contrast this with what the English
restoration did with the Regicides and with the remains of Cromwell.
The greatest of French rulers sleeps in the most gorgeous mausoleum of
modern times: the greatest of English rulers--Where is his grave?
Hoche was no sooner out of prison than the Committee of Public Safety
who had been asking themselves day after day whether the time had
come to send him to the guillotine, gave him a new command. This time
it was one he would fain have shrunk from; for he was to draw his
sword against Frenchmen. In the west of France was the new Department
of La Vendée. The inhabitants were rural in their occupations and
primitive in their manners. They were devoted Roman Catholics and
consequently devoted royalists. Many priests flying for their lives
from Liberty, Equality and Fraternity had taken refuge among them, and
had strengthened their fealty to the old régime. The Vendéeans had
risen in arms against the Republic, and the insurrection had extended
to neighboring Departments. Such was the valor of the men and the skill
of their leaders that they had thus far repulsed every force sent
against them. Even Kléber afterwards the victor of Heliopolis, had been
defeated and driven back. France face to face with Europe in arms,
could hardly survive with this ulcer in her bosom: it was therefore
her best soldier that she now chose to deal with it. Hoche set about
the task with characteristic energy. He made no mistakes, he suffered
no defeats and at the end of a sanguinary campaign La Vendée was
pacificated, that is, was turned into a desert.
It is illustrative of the imbecility with which this European war upon
France was for some years carried on, that no adequate effort was made
to take advantage of this revolt of the Vendéeans. The only important
attempt to second them was the expedition to Quiberon Bay. A small
force of emigrants, that is of French royalists were conveyed to that
bay by an English fleet. They landed and fortified their position;
and as it was commanded by the English guns, they felt themselves
safe till they could form junction with the insurgents. But they had
counted without their host, that is without Hoche; and almost before
they thought he could be aware of their coming, his troops were scaling
their defenses. The affair was soon over, and but few of the invaders
escaped. What added to the carnage was that the guns of the English
fleet played the while upon the scene of action, mowing down with
cynical impartiality friend and foe alike. The English commander no
doubt felt that every man laid low was one Frenchman the less, and how
could he send ashore first to ascertain his politics?
It was toward the close of Hoche’s campaign in La Vendée that another
campaign more notable was in progress on the eastern frontier. Let us
take a glance at the chain of events that caused this campaign to be so
remarkable.
The Convention was not an adequate government for a great people,
but it was better than none. Such however was not the opinion of the
socialists and communists and anarchists who swarmed in Paris, and had
gained control of the Sections, that is of the ward-meetings. These
philosophers held that the best government was the one that governed
the least, and therefore an ideal government was one that did not
govern at all. They rose to suppress the Convention, so that every man
might be a law unto himself, and Liberty, Equality and Fraternity do
their perfect work. The crisis was alarming: the Convention appealed
for protection to General Barras the military head of Paris. Barras had
under him an artillery officer full of original ideas. This was the
young man already referred to as having been at Versailles when the
mob broke into the palace, and as having called the king an imbecile
for not ordering his guards to use their bayonets. Among his other
excellences this young gentleman was handsome. We have said that Hoche
was handsome, but their respective success in the path of beauty, was
different. Hoche was tall and of martial aspect. This other Apollo was
small of stature and had the features and the hands and the feet of a
good-looking girl. Nevertheless he was not a favorite with the ladies.
He had ways they did not like. When they talked he would not listen as
he ought, and as we all ought, but would look off into vacancy as if
rapt in thought; and they were malicious enough to say that he _was_
rapt in thought--the thought of his own attractions; and considering
the complex character of the man it is not impossible the ladies were
right. With men however he stood better. Few could come in contact with
him without feeling his influence, and Barras was often led by him. To
him then he had recourse in the threatened peril. The young officer
planted cannon in different parts of the town under lieutenants of his
own mettle, and himself took charge of a few pieces in the street Saint
Honoré at the corner where stands the church Saint Roch. The insurgents
came swarming up. He gave them no warning of what was in store for them
but waited till they were within range, and then let drive into them a
pitiless storm of grape-shot. The pavement was strewed with the dead
and dying. Revolt had met its match: the Convention was saved.
A few weeks later, in October 1795, the Convention laid down its
functions and was replaced by the Directory which body in the following
February, conferred upon this remorseless gunner the command of
the army of Italy, the army from which Hoche had been withdrawn to
be thrown into prison. Behold then this new apostle of grape-shot
red-handed from the slaughter of his fellow republicans, at the head
of the best and worst army of the Republic! His men as it proved, were
fully gifted with that fanatical valor which made the revolutionary
soldier so formidable; but their clothes were in rags and their shoes
full of holes, and as for food Thiers intimates that it was a choice
between stealing and starving. Their young commander told them what was
perfectly true--for he had contracted the habit of telling the truth
when it would serve--that he was as poor as they; silver and gold had
he none; but their bayonets were in good order, and he was going to
lead them to a land of promise flowing with food and raiment and money
to boot. And at the head of these marauders he passed into Italy.
I need not remind you how he made short work of all opposition; how
three allied armies each superior to his own, went down one after
another before his ragamuffins as if three earthquakes had yawned for
them. History had never before and has never since recorded so rapid a
succession of decisive victories.
Hoche read with mingled admiration and envy the bulletins that came
from this astonishing campaign. He was loud in his applause of the new
hero, but he was at no pains to conceal his chagrin that he himself had
not been permitted to lead those troops to that field of glory. Had he
been so permitted would the result have been the same? We may easily
believe that his energy and soldiership would have borne him through
triumphant; but that the Italian campaign would then have stood out
the great masterpiece of modern warfare may be doubted. We may claim
that Hoche was a great general without claiming for him the genius of
Bonaparte.
La Vendée pacificated, Hoche fell into the delusion still common on
the continent of Europe and in this country, that the Irish need only
a little outside aid and coöperation to revolt against the domination
of the English. He headed an expedition to Ireland. His fleet was
scattered by a storm, and driven back; and as his services were needed
elsewhere, he did not renew the attempt.
He took command of the army of the Sambre and Meuse and advanced to the
left bank of the Rhine with eighty thousand men. On the right bank was
the enemy in still greater force but much scattered to prevent him from
crossing. The bridges and fords for miles bristled with cannon. But
he outmanoevred his opponent and repeated the noted feat of Condé by
crossing the Rhine in face of the enemy. A series of battles followed
in which Hoche was victorious. He was pursuing the beaten allies, and
had written to the Directory that he expected to bring them to bay on
the banks of the Danube, when he received news of the armistice of
Léoben signed by Bonaparte and the archduke Charles; and he had nothing
to do but to lead back his troops foiled of their prey.