allies entered France by the line of the Moselle. There was one French
army to their left at Metz, and another to their right along Vauban's
chain of fortresses, with an undefended interval between. To widen the
gap they laid siege to Longwy, the nearest fortified place, and took
it, after a feeble resistance, on August 24. When the news spread
there was a moment of alarm, and the Council of Defence proposed to
retire from the capital. Danton declared that he would burn Paris to
the ground rather than abandon it to the enemy. Lavergne, who made so
poor a defence at Longwy, was afterwards condemned to death. He was
disheartened by disaster, but his wife cried out that she would perish
with him, and the judges granted her prayer. She strove to give him
comfort and courage along the way, and they were guillotined together.
From Longwy the Prussians advanced upon Verdun, which surrendered
September 2, after one day's bombardment, and there was not a rampart
between them and the capital. A few miles beyond Verdun the roads to
the west traversed the Argonne, a low wooded range of hills pierced
in five places by narrow defiles, easy to defend. Then came the open
country of Champagne, and the valley of the Marne, leading, without a
natural or artificial obstacle, to Paris.
On the 7th of September Pitt wrote that he expected Brunswick soon to
reach his goal. There was no enemy in his front, while on his flank
Dumouriez clung to his frontier strongholds, persuaded that he would
arrest the invasion if he threatened the Austrians at Brussels, where
they were weakened by recent insurrection and civil war. The French
government rejected his audacious project, and ordered him to move on
Chalons, and cover the heart of France. At Sedan, Dumouriez could hear
heavy firing at a distance, and knew that Verdun was attacked, and
could not hold out. He quickly changed his plan, postponing Belgium,
but not for long, and fell back on the passes of the forest that he
was about to make so famous. "They are the Thermopylae of France," he
said, "but I mean to do better than Leonidas."
Brunswick, delaying his cumbrous march for ten days, while Breteuil
organised a new administration at Verdun, gave time for the French to
strengthen their position. Before moving forward, he pointed out on
the map the place where he intended to halt on the 16th, and men heard
for the first time the historic name, Valmy. On the 14th Clerfayt,
with the Austrians, forced one of the passes, and turned the French
left. At nightfall, Dumouriez evacuated his Thermopylae more
expeditiously than became a rival Leonidas, and established himself
across the great road to Chalons, opposite the southern defile of the
Argonne, which extends between Clermont and St. Menehould, where
Drouet rode in pursuit of the king. His infantry encountered Prussian
troopers and ran away. Ten thousand men, he wrote, were put to flight
by fifteen hundred hussars.
Napoleon said, at St. Helena, that he believed himself to be bolder
than any general that ever lived, but he would never have dared to
hold the position that Dumouriez took up. He was outnumbered, three to
one. He had been outmanoeuvred, and driven from his fastness by the
most enterprising of the allied generals; and his recruits refused to
face the enemy. He never for a moment lost confidence in himself, for
the time wasted at Verdun had given him the measure of his opponents.
He summoned Kellermann, with the army of Metz, and Beurnonville, with
10,000 men, from Lille, and they arrived, just in time, on the 19th.
Beurnonville, when his telescope showed him a regular army in order of
battle, took alarm and fell back, thinking it must be Brunswick. It
proved to be Dumouriez; and on the morning of September 20 he was at
the head of 53,000 men, with the allies gathering in his front. The
Prussians had come through the woods by the pass he had abandoned, and
as they turned to face him, they stood with their backs to the great
Catalaunian plain, which was traversed by the high road to Paris. They
had been for a month in France, and had met with no resistance.
Lafayette had deserted. The military breakdown was so apparent that
the colonel of infantry, as he marched out of Longwy, threw himself
into the river, and the governor of Verdun blew out his brains.
Clerfayt's success on the 14th and the rout of the following day
raised the hopes of the Germans, and they wrote on the 19th that they
were turning the enemy, and were sure of destroying him, if he was
rash enough to wait their attack. From his prison at Luxemburg
Lafayette urged them onward, and hinted that Dumouriez might be
induced to unite with them for the rescue of the king.
Therefore, on the morning of September 20, when the mist rose over the
French army drawn up on the low hills before them, there was joy in
the Prussian camp, and the battalions that had been trained at
Potsdam, under the eye of the great king, to the admiration of Europe,
received for the first time the republican fire. They were 34,000.
Kellermann opposed them with 36,000 men, and 40 guns against 58. It
soon appeared that things were not going as the invaders had expected.
The French soldiers were not frightened by the cannonade. Beurnonville
rode up to one of his regiments and told them to lie down, to make
way for shot. They refused to obey whilst he exposed himself on
horseback. After time had been allowed for artillery to produce its
effect on republican nerve, the Prussian infantry made ready to
attack. Gouvion St. Cyr, the only general of his time whom Napoleon
acknowledged as his equal, believed that the French would not have
stood at close quarters. But the word to advance was never given.
The secret of war, said Wellington, is to find out what is going on on
the other side of the hill. When Brunswick rode over the field some
days later, a staff officer asked him why he had not moved forward. He
answered, "Because I did not know what was behind the hill." There was
Dumouriez's reserve of 16,000 men. He had sent to the front as many as
were needed to fill Kellermann's line, and left to his colleague the
part for which he was fitted. For his conduct that day Kellermann was
named a marshal of the Empire and duke of Valmy; but the whole world
was aware that the event was due to the brain of the man in the
background. When the French had lost 300 men without wavering, the
Prussians ceased firing, and broke off the engagement. Their loss was
only 184. Yet this third-rate and mediocre action is counted, with
Waterloo and Gettysburg, among the decisive battles of history; and
Goethe was not the only man there who knew that the scene before him
was the beginning of a new epoch for mankind. With 36,000 men and 40
guns the French had arrested the advance of Europe, not by skilful
tactics or the touch of steel, but by the moral effect of their
solidity when they met the best of existing armies. The nation
discovered that the Continent was at its mercy, and the war begun for
the salvation of monarchy became a war for the expansion of the
Republic. It was founded at Paris, and consolidated at Valmy. Yet no
military event was less decisive. The French stood their ground
because nobody attacked them, and they were not attacked because they
stood their ground. The Prussians suffered a strategic, though not a
tactical defeat. By retiring to their encampment they renounced the
purposes for which they went to war, the province they occupied, and
the prestige of Frederic. They no longer possessed the advantage of
numbers, and without superior numbers there could be no dash for
Paris.
The object of the invasion was unattainable by force, but something
might be got by negotiation, if it was undertaken before force had
definitely failed. They were losing heavily, by disease and want,
while French recruits were pouring in. Therefore Dumouriez wished for
time. The king's secretary had been captured, and he sent him with
overtures, representing that the intended advance upon Paris was
hopeless, and that Prussia had more interests in common with France
than with Austria. Frederic William at once surrendered the original
demands. He made no stipulations now regarding the future government
of France or the treatment of the _emigres_. He only demanded that
Lewis should be restored, in such manner as might seem good to France,
and that the propaganda of revolution should be put an end to. That
propaganda was one of the weapons by which the French checked and
embarrassed the champions of European absolutism, and it was obvious
that it would receive encouragement from their success at Valmy. And
it was a point of honour to speak for the imprisoned monarch. But it
had become a vain thing. Dumouriez produced a newspaper with the
decree of the new Assembly abolishing monarchy. It was hard to say
what the allies were now doing on French soil. "Only do something for
the king," said Brunswick, "and we will go." The Austrians would be
satisfied if he was only a stadtholder. Kellermann promised that peace
might be obtained if he was sent back to the Tuileries. It was all too
late. The Prince, in whose behalf the allies invaded France, was now a
hostage in the power of their enemies; all that they could obtain was
a pledge not to carry the revolution into foreign countries. Their
position grew more dangerous every day, and Dumouriez grew stronger.
At the end of September Frederic William abandoned Lewis to his fate.
He had contributed to his dethronement by entering France, and he
contributed to his execution by leaving it. He did not feel that he
had deserved so prodigious a humiliation. If the Austrians had joined
as they promised with 100,000 men, the march upon the capital would
have been conceivable with energetic commanders. And the king could
justly say that he had favoured spirited schemes, and had been baffled
by the faltering commander-in-chief. He attempted, by throwing out
hints of neutrality, to escape without further loss. Dumouriez
calculated that every attack would weld the allies more closely
together, and refrained from molesting them. Early in October they
evacuated the conquered province, and retreated to the Rhine, pursued
by a few random shots, while Dumouriez hastened to Paris, to be hailed
as the saviour of his country.
* * * * *
The invasion of 1792 roused a crouching lion; and the French, after
their easy and victorious defence, went over to the attack. Whilst the
invaders were standing still, too weak to advance and too proud to
withdraw, the conquest of Europe began. The king of Sardinia, as the
father-in-law of the Comte d'Artois, had thrown himself into the
counter-revolutionary policy, and the scheme for attacking Lyons. Of
all European monarchs, since the murder of Gustavus, he was the most
hostile. An army under Montesquieu occupied Savoy and Nice without
resistance, and the people readily adopted the new system. A week
later Custine seized the left bank of the Rhine, where diminutive
secular and ecclesiastical territories, without cohesion, were an easy
prey. The Declaration of Rights, said Gouverneur Morris, proved quite
as effectual as the trumpets of Joshua. Mentz fell, October 21, and
Custine occupied Frankfort and replenished his military chest. This
excursion into the middle of the Empire was not authorised by State
policy. The idea was already taking shape that the safety of France
required the defensible and historic, or, as they unscientifically
called it, the natural frontier of the Rhine, and that the grand
conflict with Austria should be transferred to Italy. Germany was a
nation of armed men, and was best let alone. In Italy, the Austrians
would have only their own resources for war. Their most vulnerable
point was the outlying principality of Belgium, so distant from Vienna
and so near to Paris.
Dumouriez was now at liberty to deliver the stroke by which he had
hoped to stop the invasion, as Scipio drove Hannibal from Italy by
landing in Africa. By carrying the war in that direction he would
occupy the Imperialists, and would not excite the resentment of
Prussia. The country had not long been pacified, and it presented the
unusual feature that Conservatives and Liberals alike were patriotic
and rebellious. As a place where disaffection would assist war, it was
there that the process of European revolution would properly begin. On
October 19 Dumouriez assumed the command of 70,000 men, in the region
he had held before his flank march to the Argonne. One of his
lieutenants was the Peruvian adventurer Miranda, whose mission it was
to apply the movement in Europe to the rescue of Spanish America. The
other was known as Prince Egalite, senior, whose wonderful future was
already foreseen both by Dumouriez and Danton.
During the operations in Champagne the Austrians had begun the siege
of Lille, and at the turning of the tide they withdrew across the
frontier, and took up a strong position at Jemmapes, in front of Mons,
with 13,000 men. Clerfayt, again, was at their head; and when, on
November 6, he saw the French army approaching, nearly 40,000 strong,
like Nelson in the hour of death he appeared in all his stars and gold
lace, that his men, seeing him, might take heart. He was defeated, and
the next evening, at the theatre of Mons, Dumouriez was acclaimed by
the Flemish patriots. A week later he was at Brussels, and before the
end of the month he was master of Belgium. Holland was undefended, and
he proposed to conquer it; but Antwerp was already in the power of the
French, and his government feared that England would come to the
defence of the Dutch. They directed him to march upon Cologne and
complete the conquest of the Rhine.
By a decree of November 19 the Convention proffered sympathy and
succour to every people that struck a blow for freedom; but the cloven
hoof of annexation soon appeared, and it was avowed that the war would
be carried on, that the financial needs of France might be supplied,
at the expense of the populations which the French arms delivered.
These things offended the political, if not the moral sense of
Dumouriez. He became alienated from the Convention; and as England
went to war on the death of the king, there was no consideration of
policy protecting Holland. The invasion was undertaken, and
immediately failed. The Austrians, under the duke of Coburg, who on
that day founded the great fortunes of his house, came back in force,
and gave battle at Neerwinden, close to the fields of Landen and of
Ramillies. Here, March 18, Clerfayt crushed Dumouriez's left wing, and
recovered the Belgic provinces as suddenly as he had lost them four
months earlier.
Dumouriez had already resolved to treat with the Imperialists for
common action against the Regicides. Five days after his defeat he
informed Coburg that, with his support, he would lead his army against
Paris, disperse the Convention, and establish a constitutional
monarchy without the _emigres_. He promised that the better part of
his force would follow him. The volunteers were Jacobinical; but the
regulars were jealous of the volunteers, and would obey their general.
As he felt his way, hostile officers watched him, and reported what
was going on in the camp of the new Wallenstein. Twice the Jacobins
attempted to avert the peril. They invited Dumouriez to Paris, that he
might place himself at their head and overpower the Girondin majority,
and they employed men to assassinate him. At last they sent the
minister of war, accompanied by four deputies, to arrest him. There
was to have been a fifth, but he did not arrive in time, and his
absence saved France. For Dumouriez seized the envoys of the
Convention, and handed them over to Coburg, to be hostages for the
life of the queen. The deputy who failed to appear was Carnot. After
that, Dumouriez was deserted by his men, and fled to the Austrian
camp. He survived for thirty years. He became one of the shrewdest
observers of Napoleon's career, and was the confidential correspondent
of Wellington on the art they understood so well. The future "king of
the French," who went over with him, remained true to his chief during
the strange vicissitudes of their lives; and at the Restoration he
asked that he should be made a marshal. "How could you think," was the
proud comment of Dumouriez, "that they have forgotten the Argonne?"
On the 20th of June in the following year Louis Philippe drove into
town from Twickenham to learn the news from the Low Countries. His
sons still know the spot where he found his old commander
gesticulating on the pavement at Hammersmith, and learned from him how
the great war, which began with their victory at Valmy, had ended
under Napoleon at Waterloo.
XV
THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY
The calculations of the Girondins were justified by the event. Four
months after the declaration of war the throne had fallen, and the
king was in prison. Next to Dumouriez the principal members of the new
ministry were the Genevese Claviere, one of Mirabeau's advisers, and
the promoter of the assignats, Servan, a meritorious officer, better
known to us as a meritorious military historian; and Roland, whose
wife shared, on a lower scale, the social influence and intellectual
celebrity of Madame de Stael.
Dumouriez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is one of the great
figures of the Revolution. He was excessively clever rather than
great, agreeable, and abounding in resource, not only cool in danger,
as a commander should be, but steadfast and cheerful when hope seemed
lost, and ready to meet the veterans of Frederic with undisciplined
volunteers, and officers who were the remnant of the royal army.
Without principle or conviction or even scruple, he had none of the
inhumanity of dogmatic revolutionists. To the king, whom he despised,
he said, "I shall often displease you, but I shall never deceive you."
He was not an accomplice of the conspiracy to compromise him and to
ruin him by war, and would have saved him if the merit and the reward
had been his own. He did not begin well, in the arts either of war or
peace. He employed all his diplomacy, all his secret service money, in
the endeavour to make Prussia neutral. Nothing availed against the
indignation of the Prussians at French policy, and their contempt for
French arms. The officers received orders to make ready for a march to
Paris, and were privately told that it would be a mere parade. The
first encounter with Austrians on Belgian soil confirmed this
persuasion, for the French turned and fled, and murdered one of their
generals.
Dumouriez's credit was shaken, and the Girondin leaders, who could not
rely on him to make the coming campaign turn towards the execution of
their schemes, revived the question of the clergy. On May 27 Vergniaud
carried a decree placing nonjurors at the mercy of local authorities,
and threatening them with arbitrary expulsion as public enemies in
time of national peril. If the king sanctioned, he would be isolated
and humiliated. If the king vetoed, they would have the means of
raising Paris against him, without waiting for the vicissitudes of war
or the co-operation of Dumouriez. Madame Roland wrote a letter to the
king, and her husband signed it, on June 10, representing that it was
for the safety of the priests themselves that they should be sent out
of the way of danger. Roland, proud of the composition, sent it to the
papers. The Girondin ministry was at once dismissed. Dumouriez
remained, attempted to form an administration without the Girondin
colleagues, but could not overcome the king's resistance to the act of
banishment. On June 15 he resigned office, and took a command on the
frontier. The majority in the Assembly was still faithful to the
Constitution of 1791, and opposed to further change; but the rejection
of their decree against the royalist clergy alienated them at the
critical moment. Lewis had lost ground with his friends; he had
angered the Girondins; and he had lost the services of the last man
who was strong enough to save him.
On June 15 a high official in the administration of the department was
at Maubeuge, on a visit to Lafayette. His name was Roederer, and we
shall meet him again. He rose high under Napoleon, and is one of those
to whom we owe our knowledge of the Emperor's character, as well as of
the events I am about to relate. His interview with the general was
interrupted by a message from Paris. Lafayette was called away; and
Roederer, from the next room, heard the joyful exclamations of the
officers. The news was the fall of the Girondin ministry; and
Lafayette, to strengthen the king's hands, wrote to the Assembly
remonstrating against the illiberal and unconstitutional tendencies of
the hour. His letter was read on the 18th. A new ministry had been
forming, consisting of Feuillants and men friendly to Lafayette, one
of whom, Terrier de Montciel, enjoyed the confidence of the king. On
the opposition side were the Girondins angry and alarmed at their fall
from power, the more uncompromising Jacobins, Petion at the head of
the Commune, and behind Petion, the real master of Paris, Danton,
surrounded by a group of his partisans, Panis and Sergent in the
police, Desmoulins and Freron in the press, leaders of the populace,
such as Santerre and Legendre, and above them all, the Alsatian
soldier, Westermann.
With Danton and his following we reach the lowest stage of what can
still be called the conflict of opinion, and come to bare cupidity and
vengeance, to brutal instinct and hideous passion. All these elements
were very near the surface in former phases of the Revolution. At this
point they are about to prevail, and the man of action puts himself
forward in the place of contending theorists. Robespierre and Brissot
were politicians who did not shrink from crime, but it was in the
service of some form of the democratic system. Even Marat, the most
ghastly of them all, who demanded not only slaughter but torture, and
whose ferocity was revolting and grotesque, even Marat was obedient to
a logic of his own. He adopted simply the state of nature and the
primitive contract, in which thousands of his contemporaries believed.
The poor had agreed to renounce the rights of savage life and the
prerogative of force, in return for the benefits of civilisation; but
finding the compact broken on the other side, finding that the upper
classes governed in their own interest, and left them to misery and
ignorance, they resumed the conditions of barbaric existence before
society, and were free to take what they required, and to inflict
what punishment they chose upon men who had made a profit of their
sufferings. Danton was only a strong man, who wished for a strong
government in the interest of the people, and in his own. In point of
doctrine, he cared for little but the relief of the poor by taxing the
rich. He had no sympathy with the party that was gathering in the
background, whose aim it was not only to reduce inequalities, but to
institute actual equality and the social level. There was room beyond
for more extreme developments of the logic of democracy; but the
greatest change in the modern world was wrought by Danton, for it was
he who overthrew the Monarchy and made the Republic.
When Lewis dismissed his ministers, Danton exclaimed that the time had
come to strike terror, and on June 20 he fulfilled his threat. It was
the anniversary of the Tennis Court. A monster demonstration was
organised, to plant a tree of liberty or to present a petition--in
reality to overawe the Assembly and the king. There was an expectation
that the king would perish in the tumult, but nothing definite was
settled, and no assassin was designated. It was enough that he should
give way, abandon his priests, and receive his ministers from the
populace. That was all the Girondins required, and they would assent
to no more. The king would have to choose between them and their
temporary confederates, the Cordeliers. If he gave way, he would be
spared; if he resisted, he would be slain. It was not to be
apprehended that he would resist and would yet come out alive. The
king understood the alternative before him, made his choice, and
prepared to die. After putting his house in order, he wrote, on the
19th, that he had done with this world.