the death of Louis seemed fraught with ruin to the Revolution. Spain and England awaited only this signal to join the coalition against France, who would then have the whole of Europe on her hands; and, disorganised and distracted as she was, the chances of her successful resistance appeared hopeless. In the calculations of reason, therefore, it was to be assumed as a thing impossible from the direful contingencies it must engender. But no considerations could daunt or arrest the Jacobins in their frenzy; and they were content to beard the world with a system of ferocity that isolated them from the human species. Unchecked by conscience or remorse, they hesitated at no sacrifice; and the interest expressed in behalf of Louis, only incited them the more to fling his head at the congress of associated monarchs.

CHAPTER VII.

INVASION OF BELGIUM BY THE FRENCH, AND ITS SUBSEQUENT RECONQUEST-DOWNFALL OF THE GIRONDINS-OCTOBER 1792 TO 2D JUNE 1793.

Military successes, through a singular perversion but universal interpretation of the oracles of wisdom, are considered immediate manifestations of Divine favour. Among all Christian nations they are followed by thanksgivings and pompous religious ceremonies; even by the heathen they are celebrated with games and rites of a solemn, if not sacred character; so natural is it to man to cloak his passions and iniquities with the assumption of a supernal participation. The French republic, founded, reared, and cemented in blood, was illustrated by a profuse allotment of these triumphs. The very day of its creation had been signalised by the victory of Valmy, the first of a resplendent series; and it had continued to gather fresh trophies up to the hour in which it threw off allegiance to the normal laws of humanity, and declared itself in rebellion to earth and Heaven.

Three powers only had as yet engaged in actual hostilities against France-Austria, Prussia, and Piedmont. The two first had invaded her territory, and been ignominiously expelled from it. The latter had collected an army in Savoy, with the intention of overrunning her southern provinces. Montesquiou, who commanded the forces levied to oppose this army, which was composed of Piedmontese and Austrians, had, after narrowly escaping impeachment for inertness, which was construed to be treachery, assumed the offensive; and without his enemy making

any serious effort to stop him, conquered the whole of Savoy, together with the county of Nice. In reporting his achievement, he mentioned that the people of those countries were animated with the spirit of liberty, and ripe for enfranchisement, whereupon the Convention determined, in conformity with a design first propounded by the daring genius of Dumouriez, to extend the confines of France to what were denominated her natural limits on that frontier-namely, the chain of the Alps-and to incorporate Savoy under the title of the department of Mont Blanc. According to the same inspiration, the natural boundary on the east was to be the Rhine, from the sea to Switzerland; and this great idea, conceived when France was threatened with annihilation, became the fixed and irrevocable dogma of the Revolution. Dumouriez had himself foregone the opportunity of realising it by an active pursuit of the retreating Prussians, and by a junction with Custine, who, after seizing the important stronghold of Mayence, had imprudently ventured across the Rhine to levy contributions on the city of Frankfort; an act in itself most censurable, and as an aggression on the German empire, most heedless and impolitic. But Dumouriez left his army, and hastened to Paris, in order to make arrangements for his projected invasion of Belgium. He stayed four days only in the capital, and temporised, with his usual ability, between the contending factions; by both of whom he was treated with attention, but scarcely with cordiality. His great services could not be denied; his necessity, too, was manifest; but still he was an object of distrust to the Girondins, because they had not forgotten his defection in June 1792, on the dismissal of the three ministers; to the Jacobins, because they were habitually suspicious of all who, by talents or merit, attained a superiority independently of them. Marat openly assailed him with his accustomed virulence, and ascribed to him the design of rendering himself Duke of Brabant. Nevertheless, he settled with Servan and the Executive Council the general plan of a winter campaign, and obtained promises of all the needful supplies for his army, together with a remittance of 6,000,000 francs in specie towards its pay. He set out for Flanders on the 20th October, and on his arrival found that the siege of Lille had been raised by Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, who had retreated across the frontier, after uselessly bombarding the town, without an adequate force to reduce it. He also learnt that Servan, immediately after his departure, had resigned the ministry at war on the plea of ill health, and been succeeded by Pache, upon the recommendation of Roland. He was well pleased at the change, for he had reasons to be discontented with Servan; but both he and the Girondins had shortly cause to regret the fatal appointment. Pache possessed a plausible simplicity, which had completely deceived the blunt

and honest Roland, and even his more sharp-witted wife. No sooner was he installed in the ministry, than he threw himself wholly into the arms of the Jacobins, swept the offices of his department of their former experienced occupants, broke up the excellent commissariat which had survived from the old régime, and annulled all the contracts of his predecessor; abandoning to a swarm of ignorant and hungry Jacobins the entire war administration. Hence the most direful confusion ensued, and the armies were left in a state of destitution. The supplies promised to Dumouriez never arrived; his soldiers were without shoes, greatcoats, or money, about to enter a country professedly as its liberators, and therefore bound to exercise forbearance towards its inhabitants; yet the Jacobins chuckled over his embarrassments, for they almost wished he might be discomfited. The general, however, was impatient to begin his enterprise; and, half-ragged as it was, he put his army in motion on the 28th. He commanded in all nearly 90,000 men, distributed into four army-corps. He himself was in the centre with 40,000 men; Labourdonnaye on his left with 18,000 towards the coast; D'Harville and Valence on his right with about 15,000 each. The two latter were appointed to prevent the junction of Clairfayt, marching from the Argonne, with Duke Albert; but owing to unavoidable delays, they failed in that object. The united imperialists amounted only, in the whole, to 45,000 men. Dumouriez, therefore, had an overwhelming superiority of force. He could afford to detach Labourdonnaye to sweep the coast, and capture the maritime towns of Ostend and Antwerp. He advanced in person against the Austrians, who, notwithstanding they were threatened and might have been turned on both their flanks, determined to defend the high road to Brussels, and took up a position behind a formidable line of intrenchments before the city of Mons. They planted about 25,000 men to guard these intrenchments, the rest of their forces being dispersed as far as Tournay, to stop Labourdonnaye if possible. The centre of their position was the village of Jemappes; their right was in the village of Quaregnon; their left in the village of Cuesmes; their extreme left on the height of Berthaimont, covering Mons. If Dumouriez could dislodge them from this latter position, he would get behind their main army, and probably compel them to lay down their arms. D'Harville was instructed to execute this decisive operation, but fortunately for the Austrians he left it unattempted. On the morning of the 6th November, the French general arranged his troops for an assault upon the Austrian lines. His purpose was to carry the two positions of Quaregnon and Cuesmes, before making an attack upon Jemappes, in order that he might take it in front and flank at the same time. But these villages were defended by strong

redoubts, and the Austrians opposed an obstinate resistance. The French had planted heavy artillery to silence the fire of the redoubts, which continued, nevertheless, to vomit destruction amongst the attacking columns. The French soldiers stood their ground with admirable firmness, and at length succeeded in storming Quaregnon; but old General Ferrand, who commanded them on that point, hesitated to follow Dumouriez's positive injunctions, which were to wheel upon Jemappes, and assault its defences in flank. He must encounter a fearful cannonade, and preferred to remain under shelter of the houses of Quaregnon. Thouvenot, in whom Dumouriez justly trusted as a second self, was sent by him to hasten the movement. He effected it by about noon, and the moment he appeared on the angle of Jemappes, Dumouriez gave the word for the centre to advance with heads down and bayonets fixed. It was led by the eldest son of Egalité, who had enjoyed the title of Duke de Chartres, and was now a lieutenant-general in the service of the republic. After undergoing many strange vicissitudes and adventures, he has since been called to the throne of France, and occupies it in this year of grace 1847. He displayed the greatest intrepidity upon the present occasion, and to him was chiefly owing the success of the battle. His troops recoiled before the tremendous fire from the Austrian intrenchments, which were reared in three tiers; whilst a large body of cavalry prepared to charge them from a ravine between Jemappes and Cuesmes. Already a brigade had given way, and exposed the flank of the centre to this charge of cavalry; Dumouriez's valet, Renard, inspired by a fit of heroism, rushed up to its commander, reproached him with cowardice, rallied the brigade, and led it to the mouth of the ravine, where, being joined by several squadrons of horse, it prevented the irruption of the Austrian hussars. Chartres, or Egalité the younger, as he was designated in the Revolutionary nomenclature, meanwhile re-formed his broken columns under murderous showers of grape, put himself at their head, and after a desperate conflict, stormed the triple range of intrenchments. Dumouriez had flown to his right wing, where Beurnonville was in distress. He restored the combat in that direction, carried Cuesmes at the point of the bayonet, and thus completed the defeat of the imperialists; who, however, retreated leisurely, and in good order. The loss on both sides was heavy: the French took 1500 prisoners, but they had more killed and wounded than the Austrians. Yet they had gained a splendid victory, by dint of fortitude and prowess alone, against veteran troops, defended by almost impregnable batteries. It excited a delirium of joy throughout France, and struck Europe with mingled astonishment and alarm. If, however, Dumouriez knew how to repel enemies and gain

battles, he was sadly deficient in the art of improving victory. This he had shown on the retreat of Brunswick, and evinced it even more palpably after Jemappes. He loitered several days in Mons, detained certainly by the destitute state of his army, and by his attempts to procure supplies voluntarily from the Belgians on the faith of assignats, in which dubious shape his only funds consisted, and allowed Duke Albert and Clairfayt to execute their retreat perfectly unmolested. It was not until the 14th November that he pushed forward and entered Brussels. Subsequently he displayed more activity; and in the course of a month, after having repulsed them in sundry stiff encounters, he expelled the Austrians from the Low Countries, pursued them to the banks of the Meuse, overran the bishopric of Liege, and was in possession of all the Belgian fortresses. On the 12th December he put his army into winter quarters, posting General Dampierre at Aix-la-Chapelle, whence he had driven Clairfayt by a brisk and final attack.

Thus had Dumouriez accomplished the object he had so long fostered in his aspiring mind: he had conquered Belgium, exalted his fame as a successful warrior, and restored the ancient terror of the French arms. He was at the height of glory, and at the summit of his wishes; yet from this very moment did his decline and ruin date. To fight and vanquish were easy things in comparison with the task of governing and administering. Belgium was in a very peculiar situation; subjugated yet emancipated, she had hailed the soldiers of the republic as deliverers. The general had assured her inhabitants in a proclamation that he came only to free them from the hated yoke of Austria, which they themselves had vainly attempted to shake off; that their government or laws would not be interfered with; that no contributions would be levied on them; and that, in short, no act of sovereignty or conquest would be exercised. Dumouriez was himself disposed to carry out the pledges of this manifesto, but the National Convention had different views. On the 19th of November, it had passed a decree promising assistance and fraternity to all populations that might be desirous of recovering their liberty; and it now proceeded to exemplify its meaning upon the Belgians, who were the first to fall under the operation of the decree. An army passing over a country, however strictly kept in check, must always cause havoc and confusion; but when the bonds of discipline are loose, the soldiers in penury and starvation, the principles of order and the rights of property in no great repute, the devastation is necessarily magnified a hundredfold. Still, in the presence of an enemy, plunder is not always feasible, and Dumouriez sought to feed the wants of his army by contracts with Belgian capitalists, which he entered into through the medium of his commissariat chiefs, Malus and D'Espagnac.