Chapter 15

One of those papers contained a detail of several projects by the leading members of the Assembly for the government of France. Guiscard, after bending his wise head over them, pronounced them all equally futile, and equally tending to democracy. The duke was of the opposite opinion, and after a glance at the papers, observed--"that he thought some of those schemes ingenious; but that they so closely resembled the ideas thrown out in Germany, under the patronage of the Emperor Joseph, as to deprive them of any strong claim to originality." "No," said he gaily, "I shall never believe that Frenchmen are changed, until I hear that there is no ballet in Paris; you might as well tell me, that the Swiss will abjure the money which makes a part of his distinction, as the Frenchman give up the laced coat, the powdered queue, and the order of St Louis at his buttonhole. Those things are the man, they are his mind, his senses, himself. He is a creation of monarchy--a clever, amusing, ingenious, and brave one; but rely upon my knowledge of human nature--if French nature be any thing of the kind--that Paris, a capital without balls, and a government without embroidery, will disgust him beyond all forgiveness. It is my opinion, that if democracy were formed to-morrow, it would be danced away in a week; or if every pedigree in France were burned in this evening's fire, you would have the Boulevards crowded with marquises and marchionesses before the month was over. Is my friend _un peu philosophe_?" He laughed at his own picture of a revolution, and his pleasantry of manner would have made his sentiments popular on any subject. Still, our long-headed friend, Guiscard, was not to be convinced.

"I may have every contempt," said he, in a hurried tone, "for the shallowness of idlers and talkers attempting to mould men by theories; but the question whether France is to remain a monarchy or not, is one of the most pressing importance to your highness's operations. It is only in this practical sense that I should think of the topic at all. You have taken the frontier towns, and have beaten the frontier army. Thus, so far as the regular force of France is concerned, the war is at an end. But then comes the grand point. A country of thirty millions of people cannot be conquered, if they can but be roused to resist. All the troops of Europe--nay, perhaps all the princes of the earth--might perish before they fully conquered a country so large as France, with so powerful a population. This seems even to be one of the provisions of Providence against ambition, that an invasion of a populous country is the most difficult operation in the world, unless the people welcome the invader. It gives every ditch the character of a fortress, and every man the spirit of a soldier. I recollect no instance in European history, where an established kingdom was conquered by invasion. They all stand at this hour, as they stood a thousand years ago. In France, we found the people without leaders, without troops, and without experience in war; of course they have not resisted our hussars and guns. But they have not joined us. In any other country of Europe, we should have recruits crowding to ask for service. But the French farmer shuts up his house; the peasant flies; the citizen barricades his gates, and gives a cannon-shot for an answer. The whole land rejects us, if it dares not repel; and, if we conquer, we shall have to colonize."

"Well, we must fight them into it," said Varnhorst.

"Or leave them to fight themselves out of it," I observed--"my national prejudices not being favourable to reasoning at the point of the bayonet."

"Or take the chances of the world, and float on wherever the surge carries us," laughed the duke.

But Guiscard was still inflexible. His deep eye flashed with a light which I never could have looked for under those projecting brows. His cheek was visited by a tinge which argued a passionate interest in the subject; and, as he spoke, his tongue uttered a nervous and powerful eloquence, which showed that Guiscard was thrown among camps, while he might have figured in senates and councils. Of course, at this distance of time, I can offer but a faint memory of his bold and spontaneous wisdom.

"I can see no result for France but democracy. This war is like no other since the fall of the Roman Empire. It is a war of the passions. What man can calculate the power of those untried elements? I implore your highness to consider with the deepest caution every step to be taken from this moment. Europe has no other commander whom it can place in a rank with yourself; and if you, at the head of the first army of Europe, shall find it necessary to retreat before the peasantry of France, it will form a disastrous era in the art of war, and a still more disastrous omen to every crowned head of Europe."

The duke looked uneasy. But he merely said with a smile--"My dear Guiscard, we must keep these sentiments to ourselves in camp. You are a cosmopolite, and look on these things with too refined a speculation. Like myself, you have dined and supped with the Diderots and Raynals--pleasant people, no doubt, but dangerous advisers."

"I have!" exclaimed his excited hearer; "and neither I, nor any other man, would have met them without admiring their talents. But I always looked on their _coterie_ as a sort of moral lunatics, the madder the more light they have."

"Our question is simply one of fact," said the duke.

"Yes, and of a fact on which the fate of Europe hinges at this moment! The monarchy of France is already cloven down. What wild shape of power is now to take up its fallen sword? The sovereignty of time, laws, and loyalty are in the grave, and the funeral rites will be bloody; but what hand is to make the ground of that grave firm enough to bear the foundations of a new throne?

"The heels of our boots and the hoofs of our horses will trample it solid enough!" exclaimed Varnhorst.

"The much stronger probability is," replied Guiscard, "that they will trample it into a mire so deep, that we may reckon the Allied powers fortunate if they can draw themselves out of it. France is revolutionized irrecoverably. Three things have been done within the last three months, any one of which would overthrow the strongest government on the Continent. By confiscating the property of the nobles, she has set the precedent for breaking down all property, thrown the prize into the hands of the populace, and thus, after corrupting them by the robbery, has bound them by the bribe. By destroying and banishing the persons of the nobility, she has done more than extinguish an antagonist to the mob--she has swept away a protector of the people. The provinces will henceforth be helpless; Paris will be the sovereign, and Paris itself will have the mob for its master. And by her third step, the ruin of the church, she has given the death-blow to the few and feeble feelings which acknowledged higher objects than those of the hour. The pressing point for us, is, how the Revolution will act upon the military spirit of the nation. The French nay succumb; but they make good soldiers, they are the only nation in Europe who have an actual fondness for war, who contemplate it as a pastime, and, in spite of all their defeats, regard it as their natural path to power."

"But they fly before our squadrons," observed the duke.

"Yes, as schoolboys fly before their master, until they are strong enough to rebel; or as the Indians fled before the lances and horses of Cortes, until they became accustomed to them. It would be infinitely wiser to leave the republicans to struggle with each other, than unite them by a national attack. Mobs, like the wolves, always fall upon the first wounded. The first faction that receives a blow in those campaigns of the Palais Royal, will have all the others tearing it to fragments. The custom will spread; every new drop of blood will let loose a torrent in retaliation; and when France has thus been drained of her fever, will be the time, either to restore her, or to paralyse for ever her power of disturbing the world."

The sound of a gun from either flank of the army, reminded us that the hour of the evening hymn had come. It broke up our council. The incomparable harmony of so many thousand voices ascended into the air; and at the discharge of another gun, all was still once more. The night had now fallen, and the fatigues of the day made repose welcome. But the conversation of the last hour made me anxious to obtain all the knowledge of the actual state of the country, and the prospects of the campaign, which could be obtained from Guiscard. Varnhorst, full of a soldier's impetuosity, was gone to the quarters of his grenadiers, and was busy with hurried preparations for the morrow. The duke had retired, and, through the curtains of his tent, I could see the lamps by whose light his secretaries were in attendance, and with whom he would probably pass the greater part of the next twelve hours. With Guiscard I continued pacing up and down in front of our quarters, listening to the observations of a mind as richly stored, and as original, as I have ever met. He still persisted in his conviction, "that we had come at the wrong time, either too early or too late; _before_ the nation had grown weary of anarchy, and _after_ they had triumphed over the throne. "The rebound," said he energetically, "will be terrible. Ten times our force would be thrown away in this war. The army may drive all things before its front; but it will be assailed in the rear, in the flanks--every where. It is like the lava which I have seen pour down from Etna into the sea. It drove the tide before it, and threw the water up in vapour; but they were too powerful for it after all. And there stands the lava fixed and cold, and there roll the surges once again, burying it from the sight of man."

A sudden harmony of trumpets, from various points of the vast encampment, pierced the ear, and in another moment the whole line of the hills was crowned with flame. The signal for lighting the fires of the Austrian and Prussian outposts had been given, and the effect was almost magical. In this army all things were done with a regularity almost perfect. The trumpet spoke, and the answer was instantaneous. All comparisons are feeble to realities of this order--seen, too, while the heart of man is quickened to enjoy and wonder, and feels scarcely less than a new existence in the stirring events every where round him. The first comparison that struck me was the vague one of a shower of stars. The mountain pinnacles were in a blaze. The general fires of the bivouacs soon spread through the forest, and down the slopes of the hills, all round to the horizon.

The night was fine, the air flowed refreshingly from the verdure of the immense woods, and the scent of the thyme and flowers of the heath, pressed by my foot, rose "wooingly on the air." All was calm and odorous. The flourish of the evening trumpets still continued to swell in the rich harmonies which German skill alone can breathe, and thoughts of the past and the future began to steal over my mind. I was once more in England, gazing on the splendid beauty of Clotilde; and imagining the thousand forms in which my weary fortunes must be shaped, before I dared offer her a share in my hopes of happiness. I saw Mariamne once more, with her smile reminding me of Shakspeare's exquisite picture--

"Oh, what a deal of scorn looks beautiful, In the contempt and anger of that lip!"

Then came a vision of my early home. The halls of Mortimer castle--the feebly surviving parent there, whom I still loved--the heartless and haughty brother--the pomp and pageantry to which he was born; while I was flung out into the wilderness, like the son of the handmaid, to perish, or, like him, escape only by a miracle. At that hour, perhaps, there were revels in the house of my fathers, while their descendant was wandering on a hill-side, in the midst of hostile armies, exposed to the chances of the conflict, and possibly only measuring with his pace the extent of his grave. But while I was thus sinking in heart, my hand, in making some unconscious gesture, struck the badge of Frederic's order on my bosom. What trifles change the current of human thoughts! That star threw more light over my darkness than the thousand constellations that studded the vault above my head. Success, honours, and public name, filled my mind. I saw all things, events, and persons through a brilliant haze of hope; and determining to follow fortune wherever she might lead me, abjured all thoughts of calamity in my unfriended, yet resolute career. Is it to consider the matter too curiously, to conceive that the laws of nature affect the mind? or that the spirit of man resembles an instrument, after all--an Aeolian harp, which owes all its pulses to the gusts that pass across its strings, and in which it simply depends upon the stronger or the feebler breeze, whether it shall smile with joyous and triumphant chords, or sink into throbs and sounds of sorrow?

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."