CHAPTER IV.

CAMPAIGN OF 1792.

AFTER the decision of the Assembly for war, and the forced declaration of Louis to that effect, in April, 1792, three considerable armies were ordered to be formed. In the north, Marshal Rochambeau commanded forty thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry, cantoned from Dunkirk to Phillipville. In the centre, La Fayette was stationed with fortyfive thousand infantry and seven thousand cavalry, from Phillipville to Lautre; while Marshal Luckner, with thirty-five thousand infantry and eight thousand cavalry, observed the course of the Rhine from Bale to Lauterburg. In the south, General Montesquieu, with fifty thousand men, was charged with the defence of the line of the Pyrenees and the course of the Rhone. But these armies, however formidable their numbers may sound, were as yet very inefficient, as the license of the Revolution had impaired their discipline, and destroyed their respect and confidence in their commanders.

To oppose these forces, however, the allies made but an indifferent demonstration. Fifty thousand Prussians and sixty-five thousand Austrians and Hessians were all that could at first be mustered at various points for the invasion of France.

Encouraged by the inconsiderable Austrian force in the Low Countries, the French resolved to invade Flanders in four columns, and on the 28th of April, 1792, put themselves in motion; but in every direction they were routed by the Austrians at the first onset, so that the corps destined to advance to Furnes fell back on hearing of these reverses, and General La Fayette judged it prudent to suspend the movement of his whole army and retire to his camp at Rancennes.

The extreme facility with which this invasion of Flanders was repelled, astonished all Europe. The Prussians conceived the utmost contempt for their new opponents, and it is curious to recur to the sentiments they expressed on the occasion. "Do not buy too many horses," said the minister Bischoffswerder, to several officers of rank; "the farce will not last long; the army of lawyers will soon be annihilated."

The Jacobins and war party at Paris, though extremely disconcerted by these disasters, had the address to conceal their apprehensions, and denounced the severest penalties against the real or supposed authors of the national disgrace. Energetic measures were taken to reenforce the armies. Rochambeau was dismissed and Luckner ordered to take his command and resume offensive operations. But this feeble and irresolute old man was ill qualified to restore the confidence or efficiency of the army. He was defeated in his first movement, and at the same time La Fayette met with a signal overthrow. These events naturally increased the presumption of the allies, and rendered them indifferent about pressing on with energy to strike a decisive blow. The Duke of Brunswick, who was intrusted with the command of the allied army, was alone adequately impressed with the importance of the campaign, and strongly urged the necessity of hastening their operations before the French could recover from their discomfiture and alarm.

On the 25th of July, the King of Prussia joined the army, and on the same day the proclamation, already referred to in Chapter II., was issued in the name of the Duke of Brunswick; though it was not drawn up by him, and he strenuously denounced its impolicy. On the 30th of July, the whole army broke up and entered the French territory.

A triple barrier defended the eastern frontier of France, and the line of march proposed by the allies lay through the centre of the chain: there were but three fortresses on this line, Sedan, Longwy and Verdun, all at that time in a wretched condition, after which nothing but fertile plains interposed between the invaders and Paris. Under these circumstances, a powerful attack and rapid advance seemed the most prudent and effectual means of terminating the campaign; and so it must have proved, had the allies displayed an energy adequate to the emergency. They advanced, indeed, but with inexplicable slowness and timidity; took the fortress of Longwy after a three days' siege, received intelligence of the flight of La Fayette from his army, and at the end of six days invested Verdun. This fortress capitulated on the 2nd of September. Sedan and the forest of Argonne in its neighborhood were now the only impediments on the road to Paris. But the successes of the allies, great in effect, though trivial as military achievements, only increased their inactivity. They lingered around Verdun until Dumourier, who was dispatched from the Assembly to take command of the army, had occupied Sedan and the passes of the forest with twenty-five thousand men. Yet though a golden opportunity was thus wantonly thrown away, the allies displayed more activity and military conduct in the sequel.

As it was now impossible to pursue his original line of advance or dislodge Dumourier by an attack in front, the Duke of Brunswick moved a part of his forces to Landres in order to turn the left of the French position. This compelled Dumourier to detach a portion of his right wing (which occupied the Croix au Bois, one of the five passes of the forest,) in order to reenforce his left; when Clairfait, finding the defences of the Croix au Bois thus weakened, pushed on with a strong body of allies and made himself master of the pass: by this means, the allies were enabled to threaten the rear of the French and disturb their communications with the capital. Dumourier was now forced to retreat with a part of his army to St. Ménéhould; but he still held the two most important passes of the Argonne (Islettes and Chalade,) and France had gained time to bring new forces into the field. Dumourier fortified his position at St. Ménéhould, and was soon joined by two considerable auxiliary armies under Kellerman and Bournonville, which raised the numbers and confidence of the Republicans to a footing of equality with the invaders.

The Duke of Brunswick, after learning the movements of Dumourier, put his troops in motion, advanced through the unguarded defiles of the forest, and took post between the French army and Paris. The hostile forces were now in a singular position: the allies faced toward the Rhine, with their rear on Champagne; while the French rear was at the forest of Argonne, and their front toward their own capital. An action immediately ensued on the field of Valmy, in which the allies had the advantage, but they did not follow it up, and the contending parties withdrew at nightfall to their original positions. But it is with an invading army as with an insurrection; an indecisive action is equivalent to a defeat. This affair was merely a cannonade; the loss on both sides did not exceed

eight hundred men, yet it produced on the allies the effect of an overthrow: it proved that the French troops could endure fire with steadiness, and repel an assault with bravery; and it destroyed the illusion under which both armies had hitherto labored-namely, that the allied troops, when joined on equal terms, were superior to the French. Indeed, the conduct of the Duke of Brunswick, both in this action and in the movements which for three weeks preceded it, would be altogether inexplicable, if the external aspect of the military events were alone considered. The truth is, as it was afterward revealed, that during this time a secret negotiation was depending between the Duke and Dumourier, with the avowed object of obtaining the recognition by Dumourier of the constitutional throne, and to accomplish a junction between his force and the allies to sustain it. The Duke was quite sincere in this project, but it soon appeared that Dumourier was not, and he had encouraged the proposal and protracted the negotiations merely to gain time for the better organization of his forces. This accounts for the Duke's partial operations at Valmy; he was fearful by a decided battle and probable victory of converting a promised ally into an irreconcileable opponent.

No sooner was the action terminated, than the interchange of secret messengers became more active than ever. Lombard, the private secretary of the Duke, allowed himself to be made prisoner in disguise, and conduoted the negotiation. The Duke insisted on the immediate liberation of the French king, and the reëstablishment of a constitutional monarchy; while Dumourier avowed that, anxious as he was to accomplish these objects, he could not hope to bring the Convention to such a decision until the allies should first evacuate the French territory; and he reasoned that after rendering such signal service to his government, they would naturally yield to his influence in behalf of the king: on the other hand, should the allies refuse this preliminary condition, he would throw all his energies into the scale of war, which, with his present reenforcements, he was well able to maintain. Besides, were the contest continued, the lives of the king and the whole royal family would be sacrificed to the resentment of the Convention.

These representations were so well put by Dumourier and sustained by such able arguments, that the allies after some discussion, in which the King of Prussia strenuously opposed the plan of Dumourier, finally consented to retreat; agreeing to evacuate the fortresses they had taken, on condition of being unmolested on their homeward march. They were not long in discovering that they had been trifled with; but in the mean time, they had lost all their advantages, and the French frontier was put in a state of defence.

Dumourier, having thus foiled the enemy by diplomacy and relieved the country from the danger that threatened it on the east, found himself at liberty to make a new attempt on Flanders.

While these decisive events were taking place in the central provinces, operations of minor importance, though material to the issue of the campaign, were going on in Alsace and the Low Countries. The French camp at Maulde was broken up, and a retreat commenced toward the camp at Bruillé, a strong position in the rear: but in executing this movement, they were, on the 14th of September, attacked and completely routed by the Austrians. Encouraged by this success, the Archduke Albert, with a force of twenty-five thousand men, undertook the siege of

Lisle, one of the strongest towns in Europe, and which, in 1708, had made a glorious defence against the united armies of Eugene and Marlborough. The garrison consisted of ten thousand men, who, with their commander, a man of courage and ability, were devoted to the cause of the Republic. In this case, little success could be anticipated from a regular siege, but the Austrians endeavored to intimidate the garrison by a bombardment, which was continued night and day for a whole week. The soldiers, however, in their bomb-proof casements, were secure from this terrible storm which fell with desolating effect on the inhabitants: and soon after, the arrival of General Lamartiliere and the approach of Dumourier forced the Austrians to raise the siege and withdraw from France. This affair, also, estimated by its results, was regarded as a glorious triumph to the French arms, and inspired the Republican troops with new energy. Meanwhile, General Custine, who was posted near Landau with seventeen thousand Frenchmen, undertook an offensive movement against Spires, where the allies had collected large magazines. By a rapid advance, he surrounded and made prisoners a corps of three thousand men-an event that led to the immediate capture of Spires, Worms and Frankenthal. Custine next moved, at the head of an army now reenforced to twenty-two thousand men, against Mayence. He invested that important fortress on the 19th of October and on the 21st, by reason of Jacobin influence and defection in the garrison, it was forced to capitulate. The allies thus lost their only fortified post on the Rhine.

Dumourier now advanced upon Flanders at the head of a central force of forty thousand men, in the highest spirits and anticipating nothing but triumph while three auxiliary armies moved in the same direction, amounting together to sixty thousand men.

The Austrians could bring to oppose Dumourier but eighteen thousand men: they were, however, intrenched at the village of Jemappes behind fourteen redoubts strengthened by all the resources of art and armed by nearly a hundred pieces of artillery: it was thought that the difference in position of the respective armies nearly atoned for their disparity in numbers, and both parties, with equal confidence, resolved on a general action.

The battle commenced at daybreak on the 6th of November. General Bournonville led the first attack against the village of Cuesmes, on the Austrian left. A sustained fire of artillery for a time arrested his efforts, but at length the flank of Jemappes was turned and the redoubts on the left of the Austrian position were carried by an impetuous assault of the French infantry. Dumourier seized this moment to bring his whole centre against the front of Jemappes. He moved on rapidly and with little loss till he reached the village, where his columns were disturbed and thrown into some confusion by a flank charge of the imperial cavalry, while the leading battalions, checked by a tremendous fire of grapeshot, were beginning to waver at the foot of the redoubts. In this extremity, a young general, rallying the broken regiments into one column, placed himself at its head, and renewed the attack with such spirit that the viliage and redoubts were carried and the Austrians driven at once from their intrenchments into the centre of the field beyond. This young officer was the Duke de Chartres, afterward LOUIS PHILIPPE, king of the French. Meantime, Bournonville, though at first successful on the right, had not followed up his attack with sufficient vigor; the Austrians had rallied,

returned to the charge, and Bournonville began, in turn, to give ground; when Dumourier hastened to the spot and rode along in front of the wavering columns, who received him with cries of vive Dumourier! The effect was decisive: the Austrians were repulsed, and the French dragoons, taking advantage of their confusion, charged home and completely routed them. Dumourier now returned to the centre to reenforce the Duke de Chartres, but he had not proceeded far when an aid-de-camp met him with the intelligence that the battle there, as well as on the left, was already won and the Austrians were retiring on all points to Mons. The Austrians lost in this action five thousand men ; but they saved all their artillery except fourteen pieces and withdrew from the field in good order. The French loss exceeded six thousand men, but they had gained a victory which greatly increased the moral strength of their army and in fact led to the immediate conquest of the whole Netherlands; for the Austrians were so disheartened by the defeat of Jemappes, that between their own want of conduct and the Jacobin influence which pervaded their garrisons, every fortress of the Low Countries, including Antwerp and Namur, fell into the hands of the French before the middle of December.

But the revolutionary party in Flanders, which had contributed so much to the success of the French arms, soon reaped the bitter fruits of Republican conquest. The French Convention issued a decree on the 15th of December, proclaiming in their conquered provinces, "the sovereignty of the people, the suppression of all the constituted authorities, subsisting taxes and imposts, feudal and territorial rights, the privileges of the nobility and exclusive privileges of every description." Immediately after the issuing of this decree, Flanders was inundated by a host of revolutionary agents, with "liberty," "patriotism," and " protection" on their tongues, and violence, confiscation and bloodshed in their measures. Danton, Lacroix and Carrier were at the head of this band; and, infusing their own infernal energy into their agents, they gave the inhabitants of Flanders a foretaste of the Reign of Terror.

The French troops, thus successful on the northern and eastern frontier, and also (as related at the close of the last Chapter) in Piedmont and Savoy on the southeastern side, were destined to some reverses on the Upper Rhine, where the King of Prussia, by a vigorous assault, took possession of Frankfort and slew or made prisoners its entire garrison, with the exception of two hundred men. As the season was now far advanced, however, this success was not followed up, and both armies went into winter-quarters.

Thus terminated the campaign of 1792; a period fraught with valuable instruction for the statesman and the soldier. The contagion of Republican principles had gained for France many conquests, but the severity of Republican rule had rendered the delusion in the conquered provinces as short lived as it was fallacious. The campaign which opened under such untoward auspices, had been marked by brilliant success on the part of the French; but it was evident that their conquests had exceeded their strength, and that at its close, their affairs in many quarters were declining. The army of Dumourier fell into the most disorderly state, whole battalions having deserted their colors and returned home or spread themselves as banditti over the vanquished territory. The armies of Bournonville and Custine were in little better condition, their recent fail. ures having gone far to neutralize the effect of their previous success;