"This prince's countenance," he writes in his secret correspondence, "betokens depth and finesse. He speaks with eloquence and precision: he is prodigiously well-informed, industrious, and clear-sighted: he has a vast correspondence, which he owes to his merit alone: he is even economical of his amours. His mistress, Madame de Hartfeld, is the most sensible woman of his court. A real Alcibiades, he loves pleasure, but never allows it to intrude on business. When acting as the Prussian general, no one so early, so active, so precisely exact as he. Under a calm aspect, which arises from the absolute control he has over his mind, his brilliant imagination and ambitious aspirations often carry him away; but the circumspection which he imposes on himself, and the satisfactory reflection of his fame, restrain him and lead him to doubts, which, perhaps, constitute his sole defect."
Mirabeau predicted to the Duke of Brunswick, from this moment, leading influence in the affairs of Germany after the death of the king of Prussia, whom Germany called the Great King.
The duke was then fifty years of age. He defended himself, in his conversations with Mirabeau, from the charge of loving war. "Battles are games of chance," said he to the French traveller: "up to this time I have been fortunate. Who knows if to-day, although more lucky, I should be as well used by fortune?" A year after this remark he made the triumphant invasion of Holland, at the head of the troops of England. Some years later Germany nominated him generalissimo.
But war with France, however it might be grateful to his ambition as a soldier, was repugnant to his mind as a philosopher. He felt he should but ill carry out the ideas in which he had been educated. Mirabeau had made that profound remark, which prophesied the weaknesses and defects of a coalition guided by that prince: "This man is of a rare stamp, but he is too much of a sage to be feared by sages."
This phrase explains the offer of the crown of France made to the Duke of Brunswick by Custine, in the name of the monarchical portion of the Assembly. Freemasonry, that underground religion, into which nearly all the reigning princes of Germany had entered, concealed beneath its mysteries secret understandings between French philosophy and the sovereigns on the banks of the Rhine. Brothers in a religious conspiracy, they could not be very bitter enemies in politics. The Duke of Brunswick was in the depth of his heart more the citizen than the prince—more the Frenchman than the German. The offer of a throne at Paris had pleased his fancy. He fights not against a people, whose king he hopes to be, and against a cause, which he desires to conquer, but not to destroy. Such was the state of the Duke of Brunswick's mind;—consulted by the king of Prussia, he advised this monarch to turn his forces to the Polish frontier and conquer provinces there, instead of principles in France.
VI.
Dumouriez's plan was to separate, as much as possible, Prussia from Austria, in order to have but one enemy at a time to cope with; and the union of these two powers, natural and jealous rivals of each other, appeared to him so totally unnatural, that he flattered himself he could prevent or sever it. The instinctive hatred of despotism for liberty, however, overthrew all his schemes. Russia, through the ascendency of Catherine, forced Prussia and Austria to make common cause against the Revolution. At Vienna, the young Emperor Francis I. made far greater preparations for war than for negotiation. The Prince de Kaunitz, his principal minister, replied to the notes of Dumouriez in language that seemed a defiance of the Assembly. Dumouriez laid these documents before the Assembly, and forestalled the expressions of their just indignation, by bursting himself into patriotic anger. The contre coup of these scenes was felt even in the cabinet of the emperor at Vienna, where Francis I., pale and trembling with rage, censured the tardiness of his minister. He was present every day at the conferences held at the bedside of the veteran Prince de Kaunitz and the Prussian and Russian envoys charged by their sovereigns to foment the war. The king of Prussia demanded to have the whole direction of the war in his hands, and he proposed the sudden invasion of the French territory as the most efficacious means of preventing the effusion of blood, by striking terror into the Revolution, and causing a counter-revolution, with the hope of which the emigrés flattered him, to break out in France. An interview to concert the measures of Austria and Prussia, was fixed between the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince de Hohenlohe, general of the emperor's army. For form's sake, however, conferences were still carried on at Vienna between M. de Noailles, the French ambassador, and Count Philippe de Cobentzel, vice-chancellor of the court. These conferences, in which the liberty of the people and the absolute sovereignty of monarchs continually strove to conciliate two irreconcileable principles, ended invariably in mutual reproaches. A speech of M. de Cobentzel broke off all negotiations, and this speech, made public at Paris, caused the final declaration of war. Dumouriez proposed it at the council, and induced the king, as if by the hand of fatality, himself to propose the war to his people. "The people," said he, "will credit your attachment when they behold you embrace their cause, and combat kings in its defence."
The king, surrounded by his ministers, appeared unexpectedly at the Assembly on the 20th of April, at the conclusion of the council. A solemn silence reigned in the Assembly, for every one felt that the decisive word was now about to be pronounced—and they were not deceived. After a full report of the negotiations with the house of Austria had been read by Dumouriez, the king added in a low but firm voice, "You have just heard the report which has been made to my council; these conclusions have been unanimously adopted, and I myself have taken the same resolution. I have exhausted every means of maintaining peace, and I now come, in conformity with the terms of the constitution, to propose to you, formally, war with the king of Hungary and Bohemia."
The king, after this speech, quitted the Assembly amidst cries and gestures of enthusiasm, which burst forth in the salle and the tribunes: the people followed their example. France felt certain of herself when she was the first to attack all Europe armed against her. It seemed to all good citizens that domestic troubles would cease before this mighty external excitement of a people who defend their frontiers. That the cause of liberty would be judged in a few hours on the field of battle, and that the constitution needed only a victory, in order to render the nation free at home, and triumphant abroad. The king himself re-entered his palace relieved from the cruel weight of irresolution which had so long oppressed him. War against his allies and his brothers had cost him many a pang. This sacrifice of his feelings to the constitution seemed to him to merit the gratitude of the Assembly, and by thus identifying himself with the cause of his country, he flattered himself that he should at least recover the good opinion and the love of his people. The Assembly separated without deliberating, and gave a few hours up to enthusiasm rather than to reflection.