XXIV. 1792. "We have discharged our duty in seizing with BOOK courage on the only means of preserving liberty that occurred to our consideration; we shall be spared remorse at least; nor shall we have to reproach ourselves with having seen a means of saving our country and not having embraced it." added M. le M. Luckner, On the following day a new provisional executive council was appointed, consisting of the popular ministers, Roland, Servan, and Clavière, dismissed by the king; to whom was Brun, as minister of foreign affairs. M. Dumouriez, now acting in the capacity of general in the army, and the other commanders, submitted with readiness to the authority of the Assembly. The conduct of M. Fayette had for some time past been such as to excite the strongest suspicions of treachery, and in the present crisis he alone had the presumption to attempt resistance; but finding himself wholly unsupported by his troops, he was obliged to make a precipitate escape. Being intercepted in his flight, and delivered up to the Prussians, he was committed close prisoner to the fortress of Magdeburg, and treated with a severity not to be wholly ascribed to the part taken by him in the French revolution.* After a short interval M. Fayette was delivered up by Prussia to Austria, and confined for several years in the dungeons of Olmut z. "The consequences of the shocking injustice done to M. la Fayette," as M. de Segur observes, "were BOOK The combined armies of Austria and Prussia in XXIV. Progress of the mean time made a rapid and alarming progress. 1792. The town of Longwy surrendered on the 21st bined ar- August, and in a few days afterwards that of Vermies. dun, M. Fayette having previously drawn back the com Massacres of Septem his army to Sedan on their approach, and now the country was by a formal decree pronounced to be in danger; yet even in these circumstances the National Assembly had the magnanimity to declare war against the king of Sardinia, who had given repeated and flagrant proofs of his hostile disposition towards France. Since the deposition of the king the prisons ber had been filled with persons accused or suspected of disaffection to the existing government; and a sort of phrensy seizing the populace on the unexpected approach of the duke, the prisons were forced open on the night of the 2d of September, and a most inhuman and infamous massacre of the prisoners took place. It is said that, application being made on this occasion to M. Danton, minister of JUSTICE, to interpose his authority in order to put a stop to these destestable enormities, he easy to be foreseen. Impressing all minds with the violence of the passions which actuated the coalesced sovereigns, it announced what vengeance was to be expected should a counter-revolution be accomplished; and confirmed the people in the dread which had been inspired by the projects of the French emigrants."-History of Frederic William II. vol. II. p. 262. 1792. replied, "When the people have done their part, BOOK I will perform mine." A considerable number of XXIV. persons, confined at Orléans for various state offences, being brought to Versailles, by order of the Assembly, for trial, were met by the same band of assassins at their arrival, (Sept. 8.) and put indiscriminately to the sword-the military escort regarding the bloody scene as passive spectators, while the inhabitants of Versailles stood stupified with horror. Amongst these victims of madness and anarchy were the ex-ministers Montmorin and De Lessart, and M. de Brissac, commandant of the king's life-guards. On the 20th of September the National Convention met at Paris, and a decree immediately passed by acclamation for the eternal abolition of royalty in France. Such had been the insidious negligence of the court, that the country was wholly unprepared for its defence; and M. Dumouriez, to whom the destiny of France was now entrusted, could scarcely oppose thirty thousand men to the army of the duke of Brunswic, consisting of eighty thousand. The unanimous opinion of a council of war, convened by general Dumouriez on the progress of the Prussian army, as the general himself informs us, was to retire behind the Marne. this, on the breaking up of the council, he declared to his friend general Thouvenot his decided Of XXIV. 1792. BOOK disapprobation; then, pointing to the forest of Argonne, in the map, "Behold," said he, "the Thermopyle of France!" The forest of Argonne, extending in length thirteen leagues from Sedan east to St. Menehould west, separates the bishoprics, i. e. Metz, Toul, and Verdun, a very rich and fertile country, from Champagne Pouilleuse, the most frightful desert in all France. Of the five passes of the forest, those of Croix-aux-Bois and Chêne Populeux to the eastward, were, after many ineffectual attempts, at length forced by general Clairfait; on which general Dumouriez abandoned the important defile of Grand-Pré, to avoid being inclosed, and after a series of admirable manoeuvres retreated without loss to the strong camp of St. Menehould. The passes of Chalade and Islettes, on the great road from Verdun, commanded by the heights of Bienne, were heroically defended by general Dillon. On the 16th of September the Prussians entered Grand-Pré, and took post on the heights of La-Lune, between the enemy and Chalons. A fierce cannonading, followed by a severe but partial conflict, or succession of conflicts, took place. But the position of the French army being adjudged, after much deliberation, impregnable, and the attempt to proceed to Paris, defended by her myriads of soldier-citizens, leaving a force now increased to 60,000 men in the rear, appearing to the Prussian general in the highest degree rash and romantic, no alternative remained. BOOK XXIV. The French army receiving continual reinforce- 1792. ments, and the Prussians beginning to experience the evils of sickness and famine, in addition to the ordinary sufferings of war, the duke of Brunswick was reduced to the humiliating necessity of commencing his retreat on the 1st of October, and by the 18th the Austrian and Prussian armies had completely evacuated France. Thus the coalition of kings seemed to approach the French throne only to hear the crash of its fall. Never was there a more sudden or extraordinary change of fortune. "Instead of parading before the camp of St. Menehould, the duke of Brunswic would have exhibited," says M. Dumouriez," a decisive stroke of genius, had he advanced with his whole army by a rapid march to Chalons, where the French had established their magazines. M. Dumouriez must, in that case, have relinquished the strong camp of St. Menehould, and, crossing the Marne, have endeavoured by great celerity of movement to gain the banks of the Seine." The duke of Brunswic is charged, by his ardent and active opponent, with being too slow and methodical." Verdun surrendered on the second of September. "Had I," says the French general, "been opposed to Frederic the Great, I should on the third have been driven back as far as Cha r |