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1792.

MILITARY OPERATIONS OF I JMOURIEZ.

25

of Barrère, and the convention assented. The accusation was set aside by the order of the day, and the defence of Robespierre was ordered to be printed.

During this war of parties, Dumouriez paid a short visit to the capital. He was welcomed at the bar of the convention with applauses and embraces; in society, with fêtes, as the hero of the day. His aim was to stand well with all parties, in consequence of which, both the most austere of the Gironde, and the most ferocious of the Mountain suspected him. He had punished a regiment of his revolutionary soldiers for massacring some emigrant deserters. The Jacobins commissioned Marat to question the general on the subject; and Marat chose the moment when Dumouriez was present at a ball given in his honor, to intrude in his office of inquisitor. "It is you whom they call Marat," observed Dumouriez to the monster's summons; "I cannot hold converse with such a person.' Still the general preserved his intimacy with Danton, who, though his hands were deeply imbrued in September's blood, was not yet decided to join the knot of Robespierre, and who wavered betwixt the anarchists and the Gironde. Dumouriez, as well as every historian of the revolution, censure the Gironde for not having conciliated Danton, who alone could have combated Robespierre. But they abhorred the minister of massacre; and however Danton was represented to them with misgivings in his atrocity, as a being not without humanity, and inclined, like his more cultivated prototype, Mirabeau, to attempt to check the impetus of the revolution that he had so mainly accelerated, still they could not bring themselves to be reconciled to him. Both Roland and his wife expressed their contempt of Danton, and of his friend Dumouriez. The latter cast back the sentiment, and said of Roland, that "the austerity of such would-be Catos had its origin far more in whim than in virtue."

The victorious general cared, indeed, little for either party. His only thought was conquest; his plan, to invade and subdue Belgium. It was to cause the adoption of this, and to prepare the means, that he visited Paris. The moment was one of elation. Custine had taken the important fortress of Mayence, the key of the Rhine, by surprise; Savoy and Nice were occupied by French armies; the Austrians had retreated from Lille, as the Prussians from Valmy: and Dumɔuriez was determined, despite the lateness of the season, to assume the offensive.

Military critics censure his plan of campaign, as void of art and ability. Dumouriez, say they, should have directed his course along the Meuse, penetrated betwixt his enemies,

and behind a great portion of them; thus separating, and, in case of victory, not only routing but annihilating them. In lieu of this, he marched straight against the Austrians under duke Albert, posted at Mons; they, of course, had thus the advantage of position, whilst to Dumouriez fell the more dif ficult task of attacking and dislodging them.

The Austrians, about 25,000 strong, occupied several vil lages upon heights in front of Mons: the central village wa Jemmapes. Despite these advantages, in being intrenched and long stationed on the ground, Dumouriez attacked them on the 6th of November; his right, his centre, and his left, each formed in column of attack. Both wings hesitated as they came into action. General Thouvenet, being sent to the left, inspired it with fresh vigor, led it on to charge with the bayonet, and drove in the Austrians. Whilst the infantry of the centre advanced, bodies of cavalry were stationed to observe and guard certain openings in a wood, whence the enemy might rush forth. On the appearance of the Austrians at this point, a brigade suddenly gave way; the habitude of sudden panic had not yet been forgotten by the French; and the entire body of the centre, suffering under the fire of the Austrian batteries, offered symptoms of backwardness and disorder. Had the Austrians been alert, a charge would have here told more effectually than all the batteries of Mons: one brave man, however, rallied the brigade. It is a singular proof of the revolutionary confusion of ranks, that the hero who rode up to this brigade, and brought it to resume at once its position and its sense of duty, was Renaud, a valet in the service of general Dumouriez. The centre itself was rallied by its commander, an officer of more illustrious birth, the then duc de Chartres, since duc d'Orleans, and king of the French. Forming the most willing and brave into a close column, the young duke led them on to the attack of Jemmapes; their reawakened ardor carried every thing before them, and drove the Austrians from their redoubts. The left being at the same time successful, the victory was complete. The vanquished lost 6000 men, and Belgium fell at once into the possession of Dumouriez. That general made his triumphant entry into Brussels on the 14th of November.

It was at this moment of universal triumph over foreign enemies, that the republicans felt all their vindictive fury excited against the unfortunate Louis XVI. If the insurrection of August, and the massacre of September, had each thei excuse in the danger and panic excited by foreign invasion, the crime of immolating the royal victim could now have ne such plea. The decapitation of Charles I. is intelligible; it

1792.

TREATMENT OF LOUIS.

27

deprived royalism of a talented chief, a powerful partisan. The English republicans struck the lion of the forest, who had long held them at bay; the French employed equal fury in spilling the blood of the lamb, nay, in previously torturing the victim. After the sack of the Tuilleries, the legislative assembly had assigned the Luxembourg as the residence of Louis; the municipality, however, thought the Temple more ecure. They transferred the royal family thither, denying them the commodious apartments that even the Temple contained, and shutting them up in the small tower, where they were huddled together, and visited with every privation and indignity. One domestic only was allowed them; the municipal officers penetrated at all times into the apartments; und openings in their dungeon-doors left them continually under the eye of their guards. It was here that the queen was summoned to behold the head of her friend borne on a pole; and hence she might daily overhear the proclamations or calumnies which the criers took care to vociferate under the windows of the Temple. After some time, Louis was separated from his family, and denied the sole consolation of his captivity, that of instructing his infant son.

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What was to be his ultimate fate? It became urgent to de cide. Petitions had been already presented, one especially from Auxerre, demanding not only his trial, but condemnation to death. Many of the French, under the influence of political rabies, deemed the revolution incomplete till it had displayed the scene of a monarch's execution. England had done as much. Should history tell that she had surpassed France in audacity? It was far less the supposed guilt of Louis than the effect to be produced by his death, that urged the fanatic revolutionists to demand it. National vanity sought to astonish Europe and to affright its kings, overlooking the crime of sacrificing the innocent..

Another feeling, stronger than vanity, worked towards the hapless monarch's destruction. This was the necessity all persons and parties felt to rival each other in zeal, and to outbid each other for popularity: that dread of the opinion of one's fellows, that of being thought lukewarm, of being left behind in the course of those sentiments which were the mode-a characteristic peculiarly strong in the French, and still most visible and most fatally operating amongst them-armed every tongue with an anathema against the king. It was not so much hatred, either personal or political, that urged his guards to vie in insulting him,-the conventionalists to vie in condemning; it was rather a trick to captivate popularity and power—a trial of who should bear off the palm

of revolutionary ferocity; the unfortunate Louis being set up as the mark, against which was discharged every blow of malice, every arrow of calumny. Base as was this motive, it grew daily more base, as it became mingled still more and more with fear; and the whole nation, whilst it invoked the goddess of liberty, was in reality prostrating itself before the demon of terror.

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However the men of the revolution might esteem them selves bound to disrespect the monarch's legitimate rights, there remained those which the constitution established by the first national assembly, and sworn to by the second, had secured to him: one of the first articles of this declared the king inviolable. This, however, was set aside. The convention decreed that itself should form the court of justice to try Louis. Even this, however, did not satisfy Robespierre, who argued that the monarch was already and de facto condemned. People do not judge like courts; they pass not sentence, but merely send forth their thunder. They do not condemn kings, they annihilate them. As for me," continued Robespierre, "I abhor the pain of death, of which your laws are so prodigal, and I entertain for Louis neither love nor hate; I detest merely his misdeeds. I demanded the abolition of the pains of death in the constituent assembly, and it is not my fault if my proposal was deemed a moral and political heresy. Since, however, this great principle of clemency has not been extended to minor offenders, how would you apply it to the king, the chief of criminals?"

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The Girondists, during this early discussion of the question, kept their opinions in reserve: they wished the king's condemnation, not his death, yet feared to risk their popularity in endeavoring to save him. A circumstance occurred at this very time to render their position more delicate. A secret closet, formed of iron, was discovered by Roland in the royal apartments at the Tuilleries; it contained documents of the connexion of many popular chiefs with the court: Mirabeau's intrigues were brought to light, and the busts of that patriot were instantly thrown down, and his body torn from the Pantheon. The Gironde was inculpated, slightly indeed, but still sufficiently to paralyze any courageous resolves on their part to save the monarch.

In an early sitting, Buzot, one of this party, seeking either to cleanse it of the suspicion of being royalist, or to cast a similar accusation on the Mountain, moved that the penalty of death should be decreed against whosoever should ever propose the re-establishment of royalty. Merlin, a Jacobin, thoughtlessly, and from a love of opposition, objected; urging

1792.

KING'S TRIAL.

29

that it belonged only to the people in their primary assem blies to decide such a question. This afforded a triumph in turn to the Gironde, who instantly exclaimed that they had discovered the design of the Jacobins to raise up a king, either in the person of one of their demagogue chiefs, or in that of the duke of Orleans. Robespierre sought to repair the bluner of Merlin, and proposed to decree that "no nation shoul nave the right to give itself a king;" and when a laugh put this down, he moved the instant condemnation and execution of Louis by virtue of an insurrection.

At length, on the 11th of December, Louis was dragged to the bar of the convention. His calm dignity silenced the noisy galleries, excited the pity of the Girondists, and even shook many of the Jacobins in their cruel resolves. Once alone he made use of a tone approaching to indignation; it was when he repelled the charge of spilling the blood of his subjects on the 10th of August. A new debate arose as to whether he should be allowed defenders: they were not conceded without a struggle. Louis selected Target and Tronchet: the former declined the dangerous office, which Lamoignon Malesherbes proffered himself to undertake. The meeting betwixt this venerable man and the fallen prince, whose minister he had been in the old days of the monarchy, was touching in the extreme: Malesherbes fell at the feet of his royal master; words could not express the feelings of either.

Louis was allowed until the 26th to prepare his defence: the interval was spent in skirmishes betwixt the parties. Louvet proposed the banishment of the Bourbon race, aiming at D'Orleans. The leading Jacobins defended the prince who fraternized with them, denounced Brissot and Louvet, and demanded the exile of Roland. On the appointed day Louis appeared once more before the convention, attended by his defenders. The young Deseze, who had been added to their number, pronounced the monarch's defence. It was of considerable length, and elaborately drawn up, but wanted dignity, in appealing more to the compassion than to the justice of the assembly. Deseze thus concluded:

"Frenchmen! the revolution, which regenerated you, has developed great virtues; beware lest it obliterate from your minds the sentiment of humanity, without which all others are false.

"Let me anticipate here the language of history. Louis ascended the throne at the age of twenty, and even thus young, gave in his high station an example of the purest morals. He showed then no guilty weakness nor corrupt passion :

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