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CHAPTER IV.

ONSET OF THE ALLIES.

WEAKNESS OF THE GERMAN ARMY CAUSED BY THE SMALL AMOUNT OF THE AUSTRIAN FORCES.- -WEAKNESS OF THE FRENCH RESULTING FROM ANARCHY. -DUMOURIEZ LOSES A WEEK BY HIS SCHEME OF INVADING BELGIUM,— SERVAN ORDERS HIM TO THE ARGONNES TAKING OF VERDUN.-DANGER OF THE FRENCH.-DILATORY MOVEMENTS OF THE DUKE OF BRUNSWICK.CLERFAIT FORCES THE ARGONNES.-FRESH DELAYS OF BRUNSWICK.FAULTY DISPOSITION OF KELLERMANN'S FORCES.-DISAGREEMENT BETWEEN THE KING ANd the Duke.-FRUITLESS CANNONADE AT VALMY.-DUMOURIEZ BEGINS A NEGOTIATION.-PRUSSIAN PROPOSALS FOR A GENERAL PEACE.DUMOURIEZ STRENGTHENS HIMSELF. THE FRENCH MINISTRY DESIRES A SEPARATE PEACE WITH PRUSSIA.-INTERVENTION OF LUCCHESINI.

THE King of Prussia passed down the Rhine on the 23rd of July from Mayence to Coblenz, where the Elector of Treves amused him with a continuance of the Mayence festivities, and the Emigrés overwhelmed him with promises of the happiest omen for the coming campaign. The army was collected in its full strength of 42,000 in the camp at Rübenach-excellent and magnificent troops, full of confidence in themselves and their leaders, and a joyful eagerness for battle. With such means and prospects, it seemed impossible that the enterprise could fail; the Emigrés rose in royal favour by their descriptions of the state of France; and on observing this they enhanced the colouring of their pictures. They dwelt most strongly on the monarchical sentiments of the People, and boasted of their own good understanding with the enemy's officers. "I," said Bouillé, "can answer for the taking of the fortresses, for I have the keys of all of them in my pocket." Under these circumstances it was unanim

1 Minutoli, 141.

CH. IV.] THE DUKE OF BRUNSWICK AND THE EMIGRÉS. 113

ously agreed that there was no necessity for wasting time over the plans of sieges drawn up at Potsdam; that in fact there was nothing to do but to march straight upon Paris amidst the plaudits of loyal Frenchmen. The King listened to these promises with eager ears, for they inspired the hope of a glorious, and yet not tediously protracted, campaign. The thoughts of the Duke of Brunswick, meanwhile, took a very different direction. He hated the whole mass of Emigrés, and amidst their buzzing swarm in Coblentz he was almost at his wits' end. "He could scarcely find elbow room in the crowd of them; he paid compliment after compliment, and made obeisances to the very ground, but his cheeks glowed, and his eyes glittered like a tiger's." His vexation increased when he saw the nature of their equipment for war, and observed that of the 8,000 men for whom he had to find supplies, about half were combatants, and the rest lackeys, hairdressers, cooks and vivandiéres. He suspected the truth of their reports, because they were the authors of them; and the more exaggerated the terms in which they described the longing of the French for the presence of their German deliverers, the more fully was he convinced of the contrary. And if the aspect of his protégés did not tend to render the prospect of war more pleasing, the intelligence which he received from his allies irrevocably determined his judgment. His head-quarters were visited at this juncture by the Austrian General Pfau from the Breisgau, and the Prussian Major Tauenzien from Belgium. We may remember that according to the stipulations of Sanssouci, Austria was to maintain 50,000 in the Breisgau, of whom 23,000 were to join the main army; while 56,000 men were to be kept in Belgium, the larger portion of whom were to support the Duke of Brunswick by besieging the border fortresses, or by direct cooperation with him. But

1

1 Tauenzien had been since the 21st of May at the Austrian headquarters in Belgium, and was afterwards attached to Clerfait's corps. Concerning Pfau, conf. Massenbach and Valentini.

2

the Duke now learned that the Upper Rhine was covered, not by 27,000, but only by 17,000 men, and that notwithstanding this, Hohenlohe-Kirchberg could only bring up 15,000 instead of 23,000 to his assistance; that there were not 56,000, but at most 40,000 men, in Belgium, of whom General Clerfait was ordered to lead only 15,000 to the main army, while the rest, after subtracting the necessary garrisons, were to be employed in a wild-goose chase to the distant Lille. Austria therefore had furnished only 71,000 instead 106,000 men for the war; and the invading army amounted to 82,000 instead of 110,000. With this force a favourable result was not to be expected, and 'considering the inadequacy of the force intended for the protection of Belgium and the Rhine, failure would inevitably be followed by a rush of the enemy over every part of the frontiers. If the general desertion of the enemy's troops, too confidently prophesied by the Emigrés, should prove as fallacious as the promises of Austria, the Duke was resolved to abide by his original plan of operations, and only to secure a basis for a second and more energetic campaign, by the capture of

the fortresses on the Meuse.

He had always been opposed to the war, but he now viewed it with abhorrence. He had never been famed for quick resolution or bold and rapid action, but now he ap

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CH. IV.]

SLOW MOVEMENTS OF THE DUKE.

115

peared crippled in every movement by want of inclination, or, at best, goaded on by momentary vexation. He saw his own reputation, and the prosperity of the Prussian State, imperilled in a hopeless enterprise; the more the King urged him on, and indulged in his own splendid dreams, the more uneasy and irritable did his General become. The Duke wished for nothing more than the capture of the fortresses on the Meuse, while the King left his siege artillery at home as being unnecessary, considering the sentiments of the French Commandants. The King was in a great hurry, yet lost several days in the parades and balls at Coblentz, and then scolded all the more at the slowness of the military movements. The Duke rejoiced at the loss of every day, as he did not wish to proceed beyond the Meuse, and feared, if the weather proved fine, that he should not be able to prevent the King from advancing further. And thus the army marched up the Moselle at a snail's pace, taking.twenty days to go from Coblentz to the French frontier. The two Austrian Generals did their best to meet the silent wishes of the Duke in this respect. Clerfait did not make his appearance at Arlon until the 16th of August, and Hohenlohe was four-and-twenty days in marching from Mannheim to Merzig on the Saare. Meanwhile news arrived of the revotion of the 10th of August, after the receipt of which the King could think of nothing but an uninterrupted and hasty march on Paris. The Duke gave way so far, that he consented to push forward to the Meuse without previously capturing the fortresses of the Moselle. And thus at last, on the 23d of August, they arrived before the little border fortress of Longwy, and forced it to capitulate, after a short bombardment, on the 26th. A passage for the invading army was thus laid open.

On the side of France little had as yet been done to meet this invasion. When it is asked with whom the fault of this omission lay, the majority of the historians of the Revolution answer without hesitation,-with the Government

of Louis XVI., who regarded the Prussians as their saviours, and naturally enough did nothing to resist the inroad. And they add that the 10th of August had, at all events, the merit of setting the military forces of France in motion against its foreign foes. Yet this view of the matter is directly contradicted by facts. In the first place the Girondist Ministry, which had declared war, did everything in its power to increase the military force, and to arm the whole country. That the results they attained were so small, was not the fault of Louis XVI., who was unable to counteract the very smallest order, but of the dilatoriness of the Assembly in passing decrees-of the want of money, and the general disorder in the administration. Servan, for example, found that the stores of powder in Mezières had been destroyed during the late anarchy; that the gun manufactory of Charleville had only been able, since 1790, to turn out 5,000 guns a year instead of 25,000; that his different measures for recruiting the army mutually interfered with one another, in consequence of the disorder which reigned in every part of the Administration, and at last produced no result at all.' When the Girondists were again succeeded by the Feuillants, the influence of the King was not increased. Lajard, the Minister at War, was entirely governed by Lafayette; and though neither of them wished for an aggressive war, as the Jacobins did, yet they were equally averse to submission to foreigners, and the triumph of the Emigrés. We may the more implicitly trust to their assurances, because they could only expect the axe from the Jacobins and the rope from the Emigrés. With them it was a question of life and death, to prepare themselves for an invincible resistance, and thereby to restore peace as speedily as possible. But all the hindrances on which Servan's measures had suffered shipwreck operated against their wishes; and they were, moreover, ex

1 Poisson, I. 432, dwells especially on the difficulty of recruiting for the line, at the same time that the National Volunteers were summoned, as the latter chose their own officers from among themselves.

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