Republican France Defies Europe – 2

The Prince of Hohenlohe requested an interview with Dumouriez that evening, his motive being to judge of the state of the army.

Continuing Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France,
our selection from Alphonse M. L. Lamartine. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments.

Previously in Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France.

Time: 1792
Place: Valmy, France (village)

These orders dispatched, he prepared his own troops for the maneuver which he himself intended to execute during the night. He sent to the heights which cover the left of Grandpré on the side of the Croix-au-Bois, where Clerfayt made him most uneasy, six battalions, six squadrons, six pieces of cannon, as a lookout, in case of any sudden attack on the part of the Austrians. At nightfall he caused the park of artillery to defile in silence by the two bridges which traverse the Aisne, and halt on the heights of Autry.

The Prince of Hohenlohe requested an interview with Dumouriez that evening, his motive being to judge of the state of the army. Dumouriez granted this, and substituted for himself in this conference General Duval, whose advanced years, white hair, and commanding stature imposed on the Austrian general. Duval affected an appearance of security, telling the Prince that Beurnonville was expected next day with eighteen thousand men, and Kellermann at the head of thirty thousand troops. Discouraged in his offers of arrangement by Duval, the Austrian chief withdrew, firmly convinced that Dumouriez meant to await the battle in his camp.

At midnight Dumouriez left the Château of Grandpré, on horseback, and went to the camp in the pitchy darkness of the night. All was hushed in repose: he forbade drums to beat or trumpets to sound but sent round in a low voice the order to strike the tents and get under arms. The darkness and confusion were unfavorable to these orders, but before the first dawn of day the army was in full march. The troops passed in double file over the bridges of Senuc and Grand Champ and ranged themselves in battle array on the eminences of Autry. Thus covered by the Aisne, Dumouriez gazed upon the foe to see if they followed; but the mystery of his movements had disconcerted the Duke of Brunswick and Clerfayt. The army cut down the bridges behind them, and then, advancing four leagues from Grandpré to Dumartin, encamped there; and in the morning General Duval dispersed a host of Prussian hussars. Dumouriez resumed his march next day, and on the 17th entered his camp of Sainte-Menehould.

The camp of Sainte-Menehould seemed to have been designed by nature to serve as a citadel for a handful of patriot soldiers, against a vast and victorious army. Protected in the front by a deep valley, on one side by the Aisne, and on the other by marshes, the back of the camp was defended by the shallow branches of the river Auve. Beyond these muddy streamlets and quagmires arose a solid and narrow piece of ground, admirably adapted for the station of a second camp; and here the general intended that Kellermann’s division should be placed, then commanding the two routes of Rheims and Châlons. Dumouriez had studied this position during his leisure hours at Grandpré, and took up his quarters with the confidence of a man who knows his ground and seizes on success with certain hand.

All his arrangements being made and head-quarters established at Sainte-Menehould, in the centre of the army, Dumouriez, annoyed at the reports, spread by fugitives, of his having been routed, wrote to the assembly: “I have been obliged,” he wrote to the President, “to abandon the camp of Grandpré; our retreat was complete, when a panic spread through the army — ten thousand men fled before one thousand five hundred Prussian hussars. All is repaired, and I answer for everything.”

At the news of the retreat of Grandpré, Kellermann, believing Dumouriez defeated, and fearful of falling himself among the Prussian forces, whom he supposed to be at the extremity of the defile of Argonne, had retreated as far as Vitry. Couriers from Dumouriez reassuring him, he again advanced, but with the slowness of a man who fears an ambush at every step. He hesitated while he obeyed. On the other side, Beurnonville, the friend and confidant of Dumouriez, had met the fugitives of Chazot’s corps. Wholly disconcerted by their statements of the complete rout of his general, Beurnonville, with some dragoons, had ascended a hill, whence he perceived Argonne, and the bare heaths which extend from Grandpré to Sainte-Menehould.

It was on the morning of the 17th, at the moment when Dumouriez’s army was moving from Dammartin to Sainte-Menehould. At the sight of this body of troops, whose uniforms and flags he could not distinguish in the heavy mist, Beurnonville had no doubt but that it was the Prussian army advancing in pursuit of the French. He immediately faced about, and advanced to Châlons by forced marches, in order to join his general. Hearing his mistake at Châlons, Beurnonville gave only twelve hours’ rest to his harassed men and arrived on the 19th with the ten thousand warlike soldiers whom he had led so far to the field of battle. Dumouriez passed them all in review, recognizing all the officers by their names, and the soldiers by their countenances, while they all saluted their leader with the loudest acclamations. The battalions and squadrons which he had carefully formed, disciplined, and accustomed to fire during the dilatory proceedings of Luckner with the army of the North, defiled before him, covered with the dust of their long march, their horses jaded, uniforms torn, shoes in holes, but their arms as perfect and as bright as if they were on parade.

Dumouriez had scarcely dismounted when Westermann and Thouvenot, his two confidential staff officers, came to inform him that the Prussian army, en masse, had passed the peak of Argonne, and were deploying on the hills of La Lune, on the other side of the Tourbe, opposite to him. At the same instant young Macdonald, his aide-de-camp, who had been sent, on the previous evening, on the road to Vitry, came galloping up, and brought him intelligence of the approach of the long-expected Kellermann, who at the head of twenty thousand men of the army of Metz, and some thousands of volunteers of Lorraine, was only at two hours’ distance. Thus the fortune of the Revolution and the genius of Dumouriez, seconding each other, brought at the appointed hour and to the fixed spot, from the two extremities of France and from the depths of Germany, the forces which were to assail and those which were to defend the empire.

Continued.

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