The first republic, or, The Whites and the Blues, in two volumes

6 November 1792

Battle of Jemappes

FILIAL LOVE, OR THE WOODEN LEG. 63

entered the service of King Ferdinand as a carbineer ; there he first taught fencing, being careful (and it was this that made his fence extremely dangerous) to mix the Neapolitan system with the French system. In 1792, when the order was issued for all Frenchmen to leave Naples, he returned to France, which he reached two days before the 2d of September, just in time to join the volunteers whom Danton was sending from the Champ de Mars to the armies, and who took so brilliant a part in the battle of Jemmapes. Augereau had there received his first rank ; thence he was sent to the Army of the Khine, where the Marquis de Beauharnais made him sergeant, and where he had lately been promoted sergeant-major. He was now thirty-six years old, and his great ambition was to rise to the rank of captain.

THE SPY. 139

His voice shook for a moment, then he went on, coldly : " I went my way. I had no money. Fortunately, in a secret part of my wallet I had kept the line which Kos- ciusko gave to me at parting — you have it in your hand. I took the road to Custrin, Francfort, and Leipzig. Like sailors who watch the polar star to guide themselves, I looked on the far horizon for France, the beacon-light of liberty, and I made my way to her. Six weeks of hunger, weariness, misery, humiliation, were all forgotten when, two days ago, I stood upon the holy ground of independence ; yes, all was forgotten, all — except vengeance. I flung myself upon my knees and I blessed God that I felt as powerful as the crime by which I had suffered. When I saw your soldiers, I saw brothers, marching, not to the conquest of the world, but to the deliverance of the oppressed peoples. They bore a flag ; I sprang to it, and begged the officer to let me kiss that sacred rag, the symbol of universal brotherhood. He hesitated. ' Ah ! ' I cried, ' I am a Pole, an exile, I have walked nine hundred miles to join you. That flag is my flag. I have a right to press it to my lips and to my heart.' Then, almost by force, I seized it and kissed it, crying out, ' Be ever pure, resplen dent, glorious, flag of the destroyers of the Bastille, flag of Valmy, of Jemmapes, of Bercheim ! ' Oh! general, in that moment I felt no weariness; I forgot my tortured

PICHEGRU'S ANSWER.

"Ah," said Pichegru, "that's just the evil of it! It is an evil that the family of the King of France should be the enemy of France ; but so it is. Louis XVI., the son of a princess of Saxony and of a son of Louis XV., has not even one half of French blood in his veins. He marries an Austrian archduchess, and these are the quarterings of his royal arms : 1st and 3d, Lorraine ; 2d, Austria ; and 4th alone, France. It results, as you say, that when the king, Louis XVI., quarrelled with his people he appealed to his family ; and as that family was the enemy, he appealed to the enemy ; and as, at his call, the enemy entered France, the king committed the crime of treason to the nation, which is equal to that of treason to royalty, if not greater. From all this came a dreadful thing. While the king was imploring the success of his family's arms he was praying for the shame of the armies of France ; the queen, knowing that the Prussians were at Verdun, counted the days till they could be in Paris ; then came that dreadful thing I spoke of: France, maddened with hatred and patriotism, rose as one man. Resolved to endure no longer the enemy before her, the Austrians and Prussians ; the enemy within her, the king and queen ; the enemy behind her, the nobles and the aristocracy, — it came to pass that the nation con founded all her enemies in one ; cannonaded the Prussians at Valmy, decimated the Austrians at Jemmapes, stabbed the aristocrats in Paris, and beheaded the king and queen

VOL. I.— 21

Then, as if they had been waiting for this demand, three or four hundred citizens rushed into the hall, demanding arms. These were veterans of the Revolution, — the living history of the last six years ; men who fought beneath the walls of the Bastille, who attacked, on the 10th of August, the same chateau they were now demanding the right to defend. They were officers covered with scars, the heroes of Jemappes and Valmy, set aside because their dazzling actions were done by men obscure in name, because they had beaten the Prussians without strategy, and the Aus- trians without knowing mathematics or how to spell. They all believed that the aristocratic faction had caused their removal from the army. It was, in fact, the reac tionary Aubry who tore their swords from their hands and the epaulets from their shoulders.

26 June 1794

Battle of Fleurus (1794)

VOL. I.— 17

As for the Army of the North, operating against the Austrians, it took Ypres and Charleroi, won the battle of Fleurus, reconquered Landrecies, occupied Namur and Treves, recovered Valenciennes, carried the fort of Creve-Cosur, also Ulrich, Gorcomm, Amsterdam, Dordrecht, Rotterdam, and the Hague. Finally, and this was an unheard-of thing, which was so far lacking to the picturesque annals of French warfare, the Dutch line-of-battle ships, caught in the ice, were captured by a squadron of huzzars on horse back. This extraordinary feat of arms, which seemed like a caprice of Providence in our favor, led to the capitulation of Zealand.

THE PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION LE PELETIER.

On the other hand, the armies, two of which were reduced to inaction by peace with Prussia arid with Spain, voted everything without restriction, amid cries of enthusiasm. By this time the Army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, the only one actively employed, had conquered at Wattignies, relieved Maubeuge, triumphed at Fleurus, given Belgium to France, crossed the Rhine at Dusseldorf, laid siege to Mayence, and, by the victories of the Ourthe and the Roe'r, had won the Rhine for France. It paused on the field of battle VOL,, i. — 18