CH. IV.] BRUNSWICK ALLOWS THE FRENCH TO ESCAPE. 137 his men in that case to fill their pockets with potatoes, and to make their way singly through the woods to the fortresses on the Moselle.1 But the very two fold chance of victory seems to have lamed the action of the Prussians. One of their chiefs intended to fight, the other to intercept, and they hindered one another. The King wished to storm and defeat, and never went out of sight of the army; so that those heights were never occupied by the Prussians. But the Duke was determined not to fight under any circumstances, since at the best it must cost him much blood, and he considered every loss as irreparable. He was altogether opposed to the march upon Paris, as a ruinous enterprise, and he feared by the loss even of a few thousand men to imperil his operations against the fortresses of the Meuse, to which he still firmly adhered. When therefore the storming columns had formed in high spirits at 11 o'clock he once more examined the position of the enemy, and then informed the King that there must be no battle. The cannonade continued, the commanders debated, and time passed away. In the evening Kellermann drew himself from his dangerous position, and occupied during the night the heights to the South of the Auve. When the Duke on the following morning likewise pushed forward a few divisions towards the South to threaten the communications of the enemy with Vitry, it was too late. Kellermann's whole army covered this road, and the Prussian demonstration was an empty show. On the important day of the 20th, scarcely 200 men had fallen on either side. The impression made on both armies was tremendous. The young French soldiers were highly elated at having stood their ground against the warriors of 1 The Author of the Tableau de la Guerre de la Revolution, II. 119, comes to exactly the same conclusion after consulting the minutes of the French Ministry at war. Brunswick had the fairest prospect of beating Kellermann; or, if he had occupied the heights beyond the Auve, of checkmating Dumouriez. Frederick the Great; but a little while ago unsteady and inclined to panic, distrusting both themselves and their leaders, they were now inspired with the greatest joy and enthusiasm. The feelings of the Prussians were in an equal degree depressed. "We are conquered," cried the old General of Hussars, Wolfradt, "because we have not fought; for what other purpose did we come hither but to fight?" Goethe, whom some discontented officers begged for a powerful expression of their feelings, gave them this very correct, but equally sorry, consolation: "From this day a new epoch in the history of the world begins, and you can say that you were present at its birth." In reality, the crushing of the young Republic was put quite out of the question on the very day of its establishment. After the last opportunity of defeating the French armies singly, at the moment of their junction, had been lost, the daily increasing masses of their opponents-the lateness of the season -the falling spirits, numbers and strength, of the German troops-decided the retreat of the Prussians. Dumouriez had long had no doubt that it would be so, supposing the position of things to become such as they actually became on the 21st. But the boldness with which he had undervalued his own danger, was fully equalled by the freedom from prejudice with which he recognized the powerful means which were still at the disposal of his enemy. The Prussians had not been in any sense conquered; their superiority in tactics was undiminished, and their numbers still sufficiently large to deal dangerous blows. How would it be, he thought, if after breaking through the Argonnes in the North, they were to pass the French position, skirting the mountains in the South, and thus carry the devastations of war into the hitherto unscathed Lorraine? Or what if they were quietly to return by the old route, and suddenly to attack the weakly garrisoned fortresses of Sedan and Montmedy, and by their capture secure themselves winter-quarters on the Meuse? We know that this very thought occupied CH. IV.] DUMOURIEZ'S WISE CAUTION. 139 the mind of the Duke, but Dumouriez felt himself by no means strong enough to be sure of frustrating either of these enterprises. From the number of the recruits who were now joining the French army, he might perhaps see his force sufficiently increased within a few days; everything would be gained if he could keep the Prussians for this space of time in their present position. He determined therefore, if possible, to obtain this respite by negotiation.2 1 The French General could have no doubt that there existed among several individuals at the head-quarters of the 1 Letter to Servan, Sep. 26: "I am trying to raise the number of my forces to 80,000; till then I shall amuse the enemy with fruitless negotiations." 2 We shall detail these negotiations in this and the following chapters the more fully, because their real purport has been hitherto entirely unknown, and has been the subject of various conjectures and fictions. First, Marat and his associates accused Dumouriez of treachery; then Beauchamp (Mémoires d'un homme d'État) made pretended disclosures adverse to the character of Brunswick, which have been repeated a thousand times, and even brought forward again by Menzel. More recently, the Legitimist Michaud has set up a counterpart to the charges of Marat by warming up with wonderful aplomb and numerous details the old Emigrants' fable, that Brunswick, Haugwitz, &c. were bribed by the booty of the September massacres and the crown jewels. Joinville in France, and Stramberg in Germany, have confidently followed his lead. We may spare ourselves a detailed refutation of this view of the matter by giving an account of the actual occurrences from the best of all sources, the secret papers of the negotiations themselves. We have also the confident assurance that no other materials besides those which we have made use of are in existence at Paris. On the Prussian side we have before us the reports of Lucchesini to the Minister in Berlin, besides which nothing of importance is likely to be found. (We have nothing to add to what we have said above, even after the last explanations of Stramberg. So long as Michaud and his associates bring forward no proofs of their inventions, it is childish, in the face of authentic sources to ask for a special refutation of those idle tales, the authors of which might have read the actual facts of the case, derived from official documents, in the Tableau de la Guerre de la Révolution, Paris 1808, II. 128) enemy, a strong inclination to peace. It is true that he had no direct intelligence from the Prussians-for everything without exception which is related of negotiations before the 20th is mere idle fable, as the correspondence of both head-quarters equally proves. Brunswick had once, on the 14th, expressed a wish for a conference, but Dumouriez, who was engaged in his retreat from Grandpré, declined the proposal. But Dumouriez, who had been Minister of foreign affairs, needed no special conference to discover a fact known throughout Europe, that the Duke in his inmost heart would rather have fought against the House of Lorraine than against the French, and that there were other influential personages who felt with him. As to the Austrians, their ardour for war had cooled quite as much as that of their allies. Hohenlohe-Kirchberg had on his side proposed a conference to Dumouriez; he was a simple earnest man, who had grown grey in arms, and never been anything else but a soldier; and he, at any rate, would not have taken such a step without higher sanction. But Dumouriez, who had always shaped his policy on the principle of war with Austria and peace with Prussia, rejected the Austrian proposals without even communicating their contents to his Minister at Paris. But he eagerly seized the opportunity of approaching the King, who alone possessed the necessary power, with the request that he would suspend operations for a few days, and thereby gratify the dearest military wish of Dumouriez. During the cannonade of the 20th he had ordered General Leveneur to skirt the rear of the Prussians. The latter had fallen in with the weakly guarded baggage of the army, at a point were no one had expected a hostile attack. Vehicles of all kinds, the military chest, baking materials, the field bureau, and military hospitals, were all collected here; and it was only with difficulty that a great disaster was 1 Opinion of the Duke of Brunswick. CH. IV.] CHARACTER OF COLONEL MANSTEIN. 141 warded off. In the tumult the private secretary of the King, Lombard, and some other civilians, were taken prisoner;1 and Dumouriez, after liberating him on the following day at the desire of the King, sent him a short memorial through an adjutant, in which the growing strength of the French, and the unpleasant position of the Prussian army, were depicted. It also represented, that a further advance of the Prussians would only aggravate the condition of Louis XVI., without furthering the ambition of the French Princes; and above all, it emphatically declared that Prussia had no interest in sacrificing herself for Austria, her constant enemy, and therefore offered an arrangement, on the basis of the negotiations which had been attempted in the Spring. The Duke immediately took up the idea with great eagerness, and obtained the support of a man whom he had hitherto not exactly counted among his admirers-Colonel Manstein, the General-Adjutant. The latter belonged to a clique of Pietists which exercised an influence upon the King chiefly through his need of ever fresh excitement. Without entirely despising the enjoyments of this world, he assumed an external mien, all the more gloomy and reserved, because, in addition to his sanctimoniousness, he had a still stronger spice of atrabilious ambition, which excited him to an active and suspicious opposition in military matters to the Duke, and in diplomatic affairs to the influence of Bischoffswerder. As a practical statesman he was a sheer egoist and materialist; recognized no other principle than the expediency of the moment, and had just as little feeling for ideal or chivalrous aims, as for any policy founded on principle or considerations of ulterior good. Such a counterpoise might at times have been advantageous to the devoted and generous We give these details because it has been universally said that Lombard allowed himself to be taken. He would certainly have chosen It another place for the purpose. |