marching, he asked the Minister to aid him in his purpose by a reinforcement of 20,000 men, and a sum of 4 million francs. "The conquest of Belgium," he wrote on the 23d, "will outweigh the loss of two or three fortresses on the Meuse; Lafayette's flight shows the impossibility of a civil war, and the danger of foreign invasion is not great: the enemy will exhaust their strength before the fortresses, and advance no further." On the 26th Servan replied by sending him express orders to start for Sedan. Dumouriez unwillingly obeyed, found everything in his new sphere of operations in the most wretched condition, and was only still more confirmed in his attachment to his Belgian project. He wrote to Servan on the 29th that no defensive war could be carried on with such troops; that their morale must be first raised by a striking success, which was only to be sought in Belgium. To give greater weight to his representations he assembled his principal officers in a Council of War, and laid his views before them. The discussion of his proposal was of no long duration, for no one knew how to meet the attack of the Duke with 19,000 men, or to bring forward a more promising plan. The General dwelt on the exhaustion of the country, the inexperience of his troops, and the superior numbers of the enemy. There was nothing left, he said, but to reinforce Kellermann from the interior, to collect as many volunteers as possible in Chalons and Soissons, and trust to a long defence of the fortresses. Meanwhile the Army of the North ought to make a bold stroke in Belgium, and thereby change the whole character of the war, and carry confusion into the ranks of the enemy. The Generals present signified their assent, and a year afterwards Dillon wrote, "I was entirely convinced by what he said." A few subalterns gnashed their teeth with rage, but they had no voice in the matter. The Council of War sent up Dumouriez's proposal to the Minister as their own; "Nothing but a desperate

CH. IV.] VARIANCE BETWEEN SERVAN AND DUMOURIEZ.

123

venture," the memorial concluded, "can save us in this imminent peril of the country."1

So untrue is the statement of Dumouriez in his memoirs, that this Council of War only considered the question of a retreat beyond the Loire; and that he himself pointed out the Argonnes on the map to his adjutant Thouvenot, with the words; "Here are the Thermopyla of France." The merit of pointing out this position belongs to Servan, the Minister at War. As early as the 31st the latter sent a plan of the campaign to the General, recommended the Argonnes to him, where he could assume the character rather of an aggressor than a defender, and easily recruit his strength from the troops on the borders of Flanders. On the following day he repeated, in the name of the Council of Ministers, both to Dumouriez and Kellermann, the order to unite their forces in the passes of Grandpré and Clermont, in order to cover the capital on this favourable ground. He was far from over-estimating the strength of this wooded position; the main point in his eyes was the retrograde movement, by which the corps, hitherto separated, and exposed singly to attack, would be united between Paris and the enemy. In several subsequent despatches he spoke of a position behind the Marne near Chalons, as still better suited to the object in view. With regard to Dumouriez's designs on Belgium, he rejected them for several reasons. He was of opinion, in the first place, that the people in Paris would raise a cry of treachery, and murder him as the author of the scheme; and he likewise thought that the conquest of Brabant would not prevent the enemy from marching on Paris, which would of itself ensure the recovery of

1 First mentioned by Jomini, then called in question by Schulz, and then confirmed by Joinville from the Protocol of the Council of war Spectateur Militaire, XXX.). We have also consulted the reports of

the officers present, General Dillon and Captain Gobert. We are astonished to find that the usually so well-informed Poisson, I. 508, repeats in this place the fable of Dumouriez's Mémoires,

the Belgian province. All that Dumouriez could have urged against these conclusive arguments was, that his plan was not founded on the abstract rules of strategy, but chiefly on the certainty that, if Belgium were threatened, the Austrians would immediately recall their corps to that country, and that Brunswick would not venture alone, with 50,000 men into the interior of France.

But before the General could treat any further on this point with the Minister, circumstances imperatively forced him to take the path which Servan had pointed out. Brunswick had spent two days at Longwy, in establishing depots and magazines, and then began his march towards Verdun; for he, like the rest of the world, supposed that Dumouriez and Kellermann were on their way from North and South respectively, with the view of uniting their forces in that place. It was on this account that Clerfait was sent to the North towards Stenai, to check the conjectured march of Dumouriez; while Hohenlohe beleaguered Thionville, after sending forward the Emigrés to the South to protect the flank and rear of the army against Kellermann. By these movements the French forces were in a fair way of being entirely cut off from one another. Dumouriez, who had wasted nearly a week over his Belgian plans, saw himself suddenly surrounded on all sides by overpowering dangers. He was still in Sedan, on the 31st, when the Prussians reached Verdun, sent Count Kalkreuth's corps over the Meuse, and began to bombard the place. Clerfait arrived on the same day with 13,000 men at Stenai, a few marches south of Dumouriez's position, and therefore between the latter and Verdun. The French General now saw that it was all over with his hopes of Belgium. His thoughts then recurred to the Argonnes, not indeed as a position which would decide the campaign, but as the only outlet by which he could escape being entirely surrounded. "My little army," he wrote to Servan, "would be in a mousetrap, cut off from Paris, from Kellermann, and its magazines, if the Prussians

CH. IV.] CONTRAST BETWEEN BRUNSWICK AND DUMOURIEZ. 125

were to occupy the mountains with 20,000 men; I must give up the Meuse, leave Verdun to its fate, and shall perhaps be forced to march to Grandpré on the Aire, and defend the pass of Autry, while a separate corps covers the passes of Clermont." He was not. a little enraged at the ill-fortune which had brought him into such a position, but he still attributed it to other causes than his unnecessary loitering in Sedan. "These are the results of your defensive warfare," he wrote on the 31st; "if it had not been for the taking of Longwy, I should never have gone to Sedan; and now I am compromised here, without being able to save anything." But notwithstanding his displeasure, he continued to be entirely free from apprehension as to the final issue of the Since he had learned that scarcely 60,000 were advancing against him, the immediate danger only appeared to him in the light of a temporary obstacle in the path of glory. "O that I had but my reinforcements," he wrote to the Minister on the 2nd, "that I might give up this tedious defence, and drive the enemy out of the country!"

war.

If we could imagine the Duke of Brunswick endowed with a few sparks of this restless energy, it is not easy to see how the French divisions could have escaped his concentrated force. And we may add that vice versa, his sharpsighted wariness would never have allowed him, in Dumouriez's case, to run so near to destruction: the rash confidence in favouring fortune, with which Dumouriez incessantly imperilled the defence of the country, would have stood the Duke in good stead in his aggressive operations;-especially if his army had been stronger by 50,000 men.

Meanwhile the. position of the French grew worse from hour to hour. On the same day, on which Dumouriez wrote those confident words, Verdun capitulated. The works were

1 According to the report of his spies, which were quite correct, since more than 20,000 men were left behind, partly before Thionville, and partly to cover the communications.

in a wretched condition, the citizens showed royalist leanings, the Council of war lost its head, and resolved to surrender on the evening of the 1st. The Commandant Beaurepaire was found the following morning, swimming in his own blood, with a discharged pistol in his hand. The next day the town was filled with the report that he had shot himself in the midst of the Council of war, out of patriotic despair. It was like the cry of the retiring garrison-“Au revoir in Champagne!"—an ominous commentary to the stories of the Emigrés about the royalist sentiments of the People. But Brunswick was still master of the situation, and needed only to stretch out his hand to take possession, in a few hours, of the grand object of all the enemy's movements-the Argonnes. These mountains stretch from South to North, nearly parallel to the Meuse, from St. Menehould to the neighbourhood of Sedan. From the most southerly of its passes the Islettes, near St. Menehould-Brunswick was at this time ten hours march, but General Dillon, whom Dumouriez intended to send thither, a march of eighteen hours. Count Kalkreuth had advanced on the 2nd to Varennes and Avoncourt, and could have reached the central and most important pass, near Grandpré, in four hours, while Dumouriez was eight hours distant, and was moreover held in check by Clerfait. Even with a view of supporting the siege of Verdun, it would seem to have been advisable to push forward a corps to the mountains, which, in case of failure, could have made good its retreat, without molestation, to the main army.

But the mistakes committed by Dumouriez at Sedan, from a desire of assuming the offensive, were made good by Brunswick's disinclination to attack. As early as the 1st of September, when he was on the heights of St. Michael before Verdun, he had declared his intention not to cross the

1 Mémoires of Gen. Lemoine, who was present and is even doubtful about the suicide.