Republican France Defies Europe – 7

Today’s installment concludes Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France,
our selection by Alphonse M. L. Lamartine.

If you have journeyed through all of the installments of this series, just one more to go and you will have completed a selection from the great works of seven thousand words. Congratulations!

Previously in Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France.

Time: 1792
Place: Valmy, France (village)

Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff and an escort of one hundred hussars. “Fellows,” said he — “for I will not call you either citizens or soldiers — you see before you this artillery, behind you this cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels among you charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from among you, or denounce them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct.” The battalions trembled and at once assumed the same spirit that pervaded the army.

The ancient feelings of honor were associated in the camps with patriotism, and Dumouriez encouraged it among his troops. Every day he received from Paris threats of dismissal, to which he replied in terms of defiance. “I will conceal my dismissal,” he wrote, “until the day when I behold the flight of the enemy: I will then show it to my soldiers, and return to Paris, to suffer the punishment my country inflicts on me for having saved her in spite of herself.”

Three commissioners of the Convention, Sillery, Carra, and Prieur, arrived at the camp on the 24th, to proclaim the Republic, and Dumouriez did not hesitate. Although a royalist, he yet felt that at present it was not a question of government, but of the safety of the country; and besides, his ambition was vast as his genius, vague as the future. A republic agitated at home, threatened from abroad, could not but be favorable to an ambitious soldier at the head of an army who adored him; for when royalty was abolished, there was no one of higher rank in the nation than its generalissimo. The commissioners had also instructions to order the retreat of the army behind the Marne. Dumouriez asked and obtained from them six days’ delay; on the seventh, at sunrise, the French videttes beheld the heights of La Lune deserted, and the columns of the Duke of Brunswick slowly defiling between the hills of Champagne, and taking the direction of Grandpré. Fortune had justified perseverance, and genius had baffled numbers. Dumouriez was triumphant, and France was saved.

At this intelligence, one general shout of “Vive la nation!” burst from the French army. The commissioners, the generals Beurnonville, Miranda, even Kellermann, threw themselves into the arms of Dumouriez, and acknowledged the superiority of his judgment and the accuracy of his perception — while the soldiers proclaimed him the Fabius of his country. But this name, which he accepted for a day, but ill responded to the ardor of his soul; and he already meditated playing the part of Hannibal, which was more consonant with the activity of his character and the determination of his genius. At home, that of Cæsar might one day tempt him. This ambition of Dumouriez explains the unmolested retreat of the Prussians through an enemy’s country, and through defiles which might easily have been converted into Caudine Forks, and under the cannon of seventy thousand French, before which the weakened and enervated army of the Duke of Brunswick had to make a flank movement.

While the military genius of Dumouriez triumphed over the Prussian army, his political genius was not asleep; for his camp, during the last days of the campaign, was at once the head-quarters of an army and the centre of diplomatic negotiations. Dumouriez had created a connection, half apparent, half secret, with the Duke of Brunswick and those officers and ministers who had most influence over the King of Prussia. Danton, the only minister who possessed any authority over Dumouriez, was in the secret of these negotiations.

The Duke of Brunswick was no less desirous than Dumouriez to negotiate, while fighting at the head-quarters of the King of Prussia were two parties, one of whom wished to retain the King with the army, and the other to remove him from it. The Count de Schulemberg, the King’s confidential agent, was the leader of the first, the Duke of Brunswick of the second; Haugwitz, Lucchesini, Lombard, the King’s secretary, Kalkreuth, and the Prince de Hohenlohe were of the party of the latter. The King resisted with the firmness of a man who has engaged his honor in a great cause in the eyes of the world, and who wished to come off with credit, or at least without loss of reputation. He remained with the army, and sent the Count de Schulemberg to direct the operations in Poland. From this day the Prince was exposed in his camp to an influence whose interest it was to slacken his march and enervate his resolutions; and from this day everything tended to a retreat.

The Duke of Brunswick only sought a pretext for opening negotiations with the French at head-quarters. So long as he was behind the Argonne, within ten leagues of Grandpré, this pretext did not offer itself, for the King of Prussia would look on these advances as a proof of treason or cowardice. The combat of Valmy, in the idea of the Duke of Brunswick, was but a negotiation carried on by the mouth of the cannon. Dumouriez held the fate of the French Revolution in his hands, and he could not believe that this general would become the mere tool of anarchical democracy. “He will cast the weight of his sword,” said he, “to weigh down the scale in favor of a constitutional monarchy; he will turn upon the jailers of the King and the murderers of September. Guardian of the frontiers, he has only to threaten to open them to the coalition, to insure obedience from the National Assembly. An arrangement between monarchical France and Prussia, under the auspices of Dumouriez, is a thousand times preferable to a war in which Prussia stakes her army against the despair of a nation.”

This ends our series of passages on Europe’s First Battle Against Republican France by Alphonse M. L. Lamartine. This blog features short and lengthy pieces on all aspects of our shared past. Here are selections from the great historians who may be forgotten (and whose work have fallen into public domain) as well as links to the most up-to-date developments in the field of history and of course, original material from yours truly, Jack Le Moine. – A little bit of everything historical is here.

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