Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

The galloping of horses roused me. It was Guiscard with an escort. "What! not in your bed yet?" was his hurried salutation. "So much the better; you will have a showy despatch to send to England to-night. Clairfait has just outdone himself. He found that the French were retreating, and he followed them without loss of time. His troops had been so dispersed by the service of the day, that he could collect but fifteen hundred hussars; and with these he gallantly set forth to pick up stragglers. His old acquaintance, Chazot, whom he had beaten the day before, was in command of a rearguard of ten thousand men. His fifteen hundred brave fellows were now exposed to ruin; and doubtless, if they had exhibited any show of retreating, they must have been ruined. But here Clairfait's à la Turque style was exactly in place. He ordered that not a shot should be fired, but that the spur and sabre should do the business; and at once plunged into the mass of infantry, cavalry, and artillery. In five minutes the whole were put to the rout—guns, baggage, and ammunition taken; and the French general-in-chief as much stripped of his rearguard, as ever a peacock was plucked of his tail."

"Will the duke follow up the blow?" was my enquiry.

"Beyond doubt. I have just left him giving orders for the advancement of the whole line at daybreak; and unless M. Dumouier is remarkably on the alert, we shall have him supping in the camp within the next twenty-four hours. But you will have better intelligence from himself; for he bade me prepare you for meeting him, as he rides to the wing from which the march begins."

"Excellent news! You and Varnhorst will be field-marshals before the campaign is over." His countenance changed.

"No; my course unfortunately lies in a different direction. The duke has been so perplexed, by the delays continually forced upon him by the diplomacy of the Allied cabinets, that he has been more than once on the point of giving up the command. Clairfait's success, and the prospect of cutting off the retreat of the French, or of getting between them and Paris, have furnished him with new materials; and I am now on my way to Berlin, to put matters in the proper point of view. Farewell, Marston, I am sorry to lose you as a comrade; but we must meet again—no laurels for me now. The duke must not find me here; he will pass by within the next five minutes."

The noble fellow sprang from his horse, and shook my hand with a fervour which I had not thought to be in his grave and lofty nature.

"Farewell!" he uttered once more, and threw himself on his saddle, and was gone.

I had scarcely lost the sound of his horse's hoofs, as they rattled up the stony ravine of the hill, when the sound of a strong body of cavalry announced the approach of the generalissimo. He soon rode up, and addressed me with his usual courtesy. "I really am afraid, Mr Marston, that you will think me in a conspiracy to prevent your enjoying a night's rest, for all our meetings, I think, have been at the 'witching hour!' But would you think it too much to mount your horse now, and ride with me, before you send your despatches to your cabinet? I must visit the troops of the left wing without delay; we can converse on the way."

I was all obedience, a knight of Prussia, and therefore at his highness's service.

"Well, well, I thought so. You English gentlemen are ready for every thing. In the mean time, while your horse is saddling, look over this letter. That was a gallant attempt of Clairfait's, and, if we had not been too far off to support him, we might have pounced upon the main body as effectually as he did upon the rear. Chazot has escaped, but one of M. Dumourier's aides-de-camp, a remarkably intelligent fellow, has been taken, and on him has been found the papers which I beg you to peruse."

It was a letter from the commander-in-chief to the Bureau de la Guerre in Paris.

"MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE,—I write this, after having been on horseback for eighteen hours. We must have reinforcements without a moment's delay, or we are lost—the honour of France is lost—France herself is lost. I have with me less than 20,000 men to defend the road to Paris against 100,000. The truth must be told—truth becomes a citizen. We have been beaten! I have been unable to hold the passes of Argonne, and the enemy's hussars are already scouring the country in my rear. I have sent order upon order to Kellerman, and all my answer is, that he is preparing to advance; but he has not stirred a step. I daresay, that he is playing trictrac at Metz this moment.

"My march from the Argonne has been a bold manoeuvre, but it has cost us something. Chazot, to whom I entrusted the protection of the march, and to whom I had given the strictest orders to keep the enemy's light troops at a distance, has suffered himself to be entrapped by those experienced campaigners, and has lost men. Duval fought bravely at the head of his brigade, and Miranda narrowly escaped being taken, in a dashing attempt to save the park of artillery. He had a horse killed under him, and was taken from the field insensible. Macdonald, who takes this, will explain more. He is a promising officer—give him a step. In the mean time, send me every man that you can. France is in danger."

"The object now," observed the duke, "will be, to press upon the enemy in his present state of disorder, until we shall either be enabled to force him to fight a pitched battle at a disadvantage, or strike in between him and the capital. And now forward!"

I mounted, and we rode through the camp—the duke occasionally giving some order for the morning to the officers commanding the successive divisions, and conversing with me on the points in discussion between England and the Allies. He was evidently dissatisfied with continental politics.

"The king and the emperor are both sincere; but that is more than I can always say for those about them. We have too many Italians, and even Frenchmen, at our German courts. They are republicans to a man; and, by consequence, every important measure is betrayed. I can perceive, in the manoeuvres of the enemy's general, that he must have been acquainted with my last despatch from Berlin; and, I am so thoroughly persuaded of the fact, that I mean to manoeuvre to-morrow on that conviction. The order from Berlin is, that I shall act upon his flanks. Within two hours after daylight I shall make a push for his centre; and, breaking through that, shall separate his wings, and crush them at my leisure. One would think," said he, pausing, and looking round him with the exaltation of conscious power, "that the troops had overheard us, and already anticipated a victory."

The sight from the knoll, where we drew our bridles, was certainly of the most striking kind. The fires, which at first I had seen glittering only on the mountain tops, were now blazing in all quarters; in the cleared spaces of the forest, on the heaths and in the ravines: the heaps of fagots gathered for the winter consumption of the cities, by woodmen of the district, were put in requisition, and the axes of the pioneers laid many a huge larch and elm on the blaze. Soldiers seldom think much of those who are to come after them; and the flames shot up among the thickets with the most unsparing brilliancy. Cheerfulness, too, prevailed; the sounds of laughter, and gay voices, and songs, arose on every side. The well-preserved game of this huge hunting-ground, the old vexation of the French peasant, now fell into hands which had no fear of the galleys for a shot at a wild boar, or bringing down a partridge. The fires exhibited many a substantial specimen of forest luxury in the act of preparation. No man enjoys rest and food like the soldier. A day's fighting and fasting gives a sense of delight to both, such as the man of cities can scarcely conceive. No epicure at his most recherché board ever knew the true pleasure of the senses, equal to the campaigner stretched upon the grass, until his supper was ready, and then sitting down to it. I acknowledge, that to me that simple rest, and that simple meal, often gave a sense of enjoyment which I have never even conceived in the luxuries of higher life. The instantaneous sleep that followed; the night without a restless moment; the awaking with all my powers refreshed, and yet with as complete an unconsciousness of the hours past away, as if I had lain down but the moment before, and started from night into sunshine—all belong to the campaigner: he has his troubles, but his enjoyments are his own, exclusive, delicious, incomparable.

An officer of the staff now rode up to make a report on some movement of the division intended to lead in the morning, and the duke gave me permission to retire. He galloped off in the direction of the column, and I slowly pursued my way to my quarters. Yet I could not resist many a halt, to gaze on the singular beauty of the bursts of flame which lighted the landscape. More than once, it reminded me of the famous Homeric description of the Trojan bivouac by the ships. All the images were the same, except that, for the sea, we had the endless meadows of Champagne, and, for the ships, the remote tents of the enemy. We had the fire, the exulting troops, the carouse, the picketed horses, the shouts and songs, the lustre of the autumnal sky, and the bold longings for victory and the dawn. Even in Pope's feeble translation, the scene is animated—

"The troops exulting sate in order round, And beaming fires illumined all the ground."

Then follows the famous simile of the moon, suddenly throwing its radiance over the obscure features of the landscape.

But Homer, the poet of realities, soon returns to the true material—

"So many flames before proud Ilion blaze, And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays, A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild, And shoot a shadowy lustre o'er the field. Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend, Whose umber'd arms by fits thick flashes send; Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn, And ardent warriors wait the rising morn."

I leave it to others to give the history of this campaign, one of the most memorable of Europe from its consequences—the tramp of that army roused the slumbering giant of France. If the Frenchman said of a battle, that it was like a ball-room, you see little beyond your opposite partner; he might have said of a campaign, that you scarcely see even so much. The largeness of the scale is beyond all personal observation. I can answer only for myself, that I was on horseback before daybreak, and marched in the midst of columns which had no more doubt of beating up the enemy's quarters than they had of eating their first meal. All were in the highest spirits; and the opinions of the staff, among whom the duke had assigned me a place, were so sanguine, that I felt some concern at their reaching the ear of the captive aide-de-camp. This induced me to draw him away gradually from the crowd. I found him lively, as his countrymen generally are, but exhibiting at once a strength of observation and a frankness of language which are more uncommon.

"I admit," said he, "that you have beaten us; but this is the natural effect of your incomparable discipline. Our army is new, our general new, every thing new but our imprudence, in venturing to meet your 100,000 with our 25,000. Yet France is not beaten. In fact, you have not met the French up to this hour."

"What!" I exclaimed in surprise; "of what nation are the troops which we have fought in the Argonne, and are now following through the high-road to Paris? The Duke of Brunswick will be amused by hearing that he has been wasting his cannon-shot on spectres."

"Ah, you English," he replied with a broad laugh, which made me still more doubt his nation, "are such matter-of-fact people, that you require substance in every thing. But what are the troops of France? Brave fellows enough, but not one of them has ever seen a shot fired in his life; even the few battalions which we had in America saw nothing but hedge-firing. The men before you have never seen more service than they could find in a cabaret, or hunting a highwayman. Some of them, I admit, have served their King in the shape of shouldering their muskets at his palace gates in Versailles, or marching in a procession of cardinals and confessors to Notre-Dame. My astonishment is, that at the first shot they did not all run to their soup, and at the second leave their muskets to take care of themselves. But they are brave; and, if they once learn to fight, the pupils will beat the master."

"You are a philosopher, Monsieur, but, I hope, no prophet. I think I observe in you something of our English blood after all. You have opinions, and speak them."

"Not quite English, nor quite French. My father was a borderer; so not even exactly either English or Scotch. He took up arms for the son of James—of course was ruined, as every one was who had to do with Stuart from the beginning of time—luckily escaped after the crash of Culloden, entered the Scottish Brigade here, and left to me nothing but his memory, his sword, and the untarnished name of Macdonald." I bowed to a name so connected with honour, and the lively aide-de-camp and I became from that moment, fast friends. After a long and fatiguing march, about noon, in one of the most sultry days of a British autumn, our advanced guard reached the front of the enemy's position. The outposts were driven in at once, and the whole army, as it came up, was formed in order of battle. Rumours had been spread of large reinforcements being on their way; and the clouds of dust which rose along the plain, and the confused sound of baggage-wagons, and heavy guns behind the hills, rendered it probable. Still the country before us was clear to the eye, and our whole force moved slowly forward to storm a range of heights, in the shape of a half-moon, which commanded the field. This was one of the sights which nothing but war can furnish, and to which no other sight on earth is equal. The motion, the shouts, the rapidity of all things—the galloping of the cavalry—the rolling of the parks of artillery—the rush of the light troops—the pressing march of the battalions—and all glittering with all the pomps of war, waving standards, flashing sabres, and the blaze thrown back from the columns' bayonets, that looked like sheets of steel, made me almost breathless. The aide-de-camp evidently enjoyed the sight as much as myself, and gave way to that instinct, by which man is a wolf, let the wise say what they will, and exults in war. But when he heard shots fired from the range of hills, his countenance changed.

"There must be some mistake here," he said, with sudden gravity. "Dumourier could never have intended to hold his position so far in advance, and so wholly unprotected. Those troops will be lost, and the whole campaign may be compromised."

The attack now commenced along the line, and the resistance was evidently serious. A heavy fire was sustained for some time; but the troops gradually established themselves on the lower part of the range. "I know it all now!" exclaimed my agitated companion, after a long look through my glass: "it is Kellerman's corps," said he, "which ought to have been a league to the rear of its present position at this moment. He must have received counter orders since I left him, or been desperately deceived; another half hour there, and he will never leave those hills but a prisoner or a corpse." From the shaking of his bridle, and the nervous quivering of his manly countenance, I saw how eagerly he would have received permission to bring the French general out of his dilemma. But he was a man of honour, and I was sure of him. In the midst of a thunder of cannon, which absolutely seemed to shake the ground under our feet, the firing suddenly ceased on the enemy's side. The cessation was followed on ours; there was an extraordinary silence over the field, and probably the generalissimo expected a flag of truce, or some proposal for the capitulation of the enemy's corps. But none came; and after a pause, in which aides-de-camp and orderlies were continually galloping between the advance and the spot where the duke stood at the head of his staff, the line moved again, and the hill was in our possession. But Kellerman was gone; and before our light troops could make any impression on the squadrons which covered the movement, he had again taken up a position on the formidable ground which was destined to figure so memorably in the annals of French soldiership, the heights of Valmy.

"What think you now, my friend?" was my question.

"Just what I thought before," was the answer. "We want science, without which bravery may fail; but we have bravery, without which science must fail. Kellerman may have been deceived in his first position, but he has evidently retrieved his error. He has now shortened his distance from his reinforcements, he has secured one of the most powerful positions in the country, and unless yon drive him out of it before nightfall, you might as well storm Ehrenbreitstein, or your own Gibraltar, by morning."

"Well, the experiment is about to be made, for my glass shows me our howitzers en masse, moving up to cannonade him with grape and canister. He will have an uneasy bivouac of it."

"Whether Kellerman can manoeuvre, I do not know. But that he will fight, I am perfectly sure. He is old, but one of the most daring and firm officers in our service. If it is in his orders to maintain those heights, he will hold them to his last cartridge and his last man."

Our conversation was now lost in the roar of artillery, and after a tremendous fire of an hour on the French position, which was answered with equal weight from the heights, a powerful division was sent to assail the principal battery. The attempt was gallantly made, and the success seemed infallible, when I heard, through all the roar, the exclamation of Macdonald, "Brave Steingell!" At the words, he pointed to a heavy column of infantry hurrying down the ravine in rear of the redoubt.

"Those are from the camp," he exclaimed, "and a few thousands more will make the post impregnable."

The sight of the column seemed to have given renewed vigour to both sides; for, while the French guns rapidly increased their fire, aided by the musketry of the newly arrived troops, the Prussian artillerists, then the first in Europe, threw in their balls in such showers, that the forest, which hitherto had largely screened the enemy, began to fall in masses; branch and trunk were swept away, and the ground became as naked of cover as if it had been stripped by the axe. The troops thus exposed could not withstand this "iron hail," and they were palpably staggered. The retreat of a brigade, after suffering immense loss, shook the whole line, and produced a charge of our dragoons up the hill. I gave an involuntary glance at Macdonald. He was pale and exhausted; but in another moment his eye sparkled, his colour came, and I heard him exclaim, "Bravo, Chazot! All is not lost yet." I saw a group of mounted officers galloping into the very spot which had been abandoned by the brigade, and followed by the colours of three or four battalions, which were planted directly under our fire. "There comes Chazot with his division!" cried the aide-de-camp; "gallant fellow, let him now make up for his ill fortune! Monsieur Brunswick will not sleep on the hill of Valmy to-night. He has been unable to force the centre, and now both flanks are secured: another attack would cost him ten thousand men. Nor will Monsieur Brunswick sleep on the hills of Valmy to-morrow. Dumourier was right; there was his Thermopylæ. But it will not be stormed. Vive la France!"

The prediction was nearly true. The unexpected reinforcements, and the approach of night, determined the generalissimo to abandon the assault for the time. The fire soon slackened, the troops were withdrawn, and, after a heavy loss on both sides, both slept upon the field.

I was roused at midnight from the deep sleep of fatigue, by an order to attend the duke, who was then holding a council. Varnhorst was my summoner, and on our way he slightly explained the purpose of his mission. "We are all in rather bad spirits at the result of to-day's action. The affair itself was not much, as it was only between detachments, but it shows two things; that the French are true to their revolutionary nonsense, and that they can fight. On even ground we have beaten them, and shall beat them again; but if Champagne gives them cover, what will it be when we get into the broken country that lies between this and Paris? Still there has been no rising of the people, and until then, we have nothing to fear for the event of the campaign."

"What then have you to fear?" was my question. "What calls the council to-night?"

"My good friend," said Varnhorst with a grave smile, which more reminded me of Guiscard, "remember the Arab apologue, that every man is born with two strings tied to him, one large and visible, but made of twisted feathers; the other so fine as to be invisible, but made of twisted steel. Thus there are few men without a visible motive, which all can see, and an invisible one—which, however, pulls then just as the puller pleases. Berlin pulls now, and the duke's glory and the good of Europe must be sacrificed to policy."

"But will the king suffer this? Will the emperor stand by and see this done?"

"They are both zealous for the liberation of the unfortunate royal family. But, entre nous—and this is a secret which I scarcely dare whisper even in a French desert—their counsellors have other ideas. Poland is the prize to which the ministers of both courts look. They know that the permanent possession of French provinces is impossible. It is against the will of your great country, against the deepest request of the French king, and against their own declarations. But Polish seizures would give them provinces to which nobody has laid claim, and which nobody can envy. The consequence is, that a negotiation is on foot at this moment to conclude the war by treaty, and, having ensured the safety of the royal family, to withdraw the army into Lorraine."

"Why am I then summoned?"

"To put your signature to the preliminaries."

I started with indignation. "They shall wait long enough if they wait till I sign them. I shall not attend this council."

"Observe," said Varnhorst, "I have spoken only on conjecture. If I return without you, my candour will be rewarded by an instant sentence for Spandau."

This decided me. I shook my gallant friend by the hand, the cloud passed from his brow, and we rode together to the council. This was of a more formal nature than I had yet witnessed. Two officers expressly sent from Vienna and Berlin, a kind of military envoys, had brought the decisions of their respective cabinets upon the crisis. The duke said little. He had lost his gay nonchalance of manners, and was palpably dispirited and disappointed. His address to me was gracious as ever; but he was more of the prince and the diplomatist, and less of the soldier. Our sitting closed with a resolution, to agree upon an armistice, and to make the immediate release of the king one of the stipulations. I combated the proposal as long as I could with decorum. I placed, in the strongest light that I could, the immense impulse which any pause in our advance must give to the revolutionary spirit in France, or even in Europe—the impossibility of relying on any negotiation which depended on the will of the rabble—and, above all, the certainty that the first sign of tardiness on the part of the Allies would overthrow the monarchy, which was now kept in existence only by the dread of our arms. I was overruled. The proposal for the armistice was signed by all present but one—that one myself. And as we broke up silently and sullenly, at the first glimpse of a cold and stormy dawn, the fit omen of our future fate, I saw a secretary of the duke, accompanied by Macdonald, sent off to the headquarters of the enemy.

All was now over, and I thought of returning to my post at Paris. I spent the rest of the day in paying parting civilities to my gallant friends, and ordered my calèche to be in readiness by morning. But my prediction had been only too true, though I had not calculated on so rapid a fulfilment. The knowledge of the armistice was no sooner made public—and, to do the French general justice, he lost neither time nor opportunity—than it was regarded as a national triumph. The electric change of public opinion, in this most electric of all countries, raised the people from a condition of the deepest terror to the highest confidence. Every man in France was a soldier, and every soldier a hero. This was the miracle of twenty-four hours. Dumourier's force instantly swelled to 100,000 men. He might have had a million, if he had asked for them. The whole country became impassable. Every village poured out its company of armed peasants; and, notwithstanding the diplomatic cessation of hostilities, a real, universal, and desperate peasant war broke upon us on every side.