The Prince de Condé was a soldier by birth, inclination, and profession. He despised these two courts, transposed to the banks of the Rhine, for his court was his camp. His son, the Duc de Bourbon, served his first campaign under his orders, and his grandson, the Duc d'Enghien, in his seventeenth year, acted as his aide-de-camp. This young prince was the representative of manly grace in the camp of the emigrés; his bravery, his enthusiasm, his generosity, all seemed to promise another hero to the heroic race of Condé. He was worthy of conquering in a cause not doomed, of dying sword in hand on the battle field, and not to fall, some years later, in the fosse at Vincennes, by the "lantern dimly burning," with no other friend than his dog, by the balls of a platoon of soldiers, ordered out at dead of night, as if for an assassination.
XVI.
Louis XVI. trembled in his palace at the shock of this war which he himself had proclaimed, and which loured on the frontiers. He did not conceal from himself that he was less the chief than the hostage of France, and that his head and that of his children would be forfeited to the nation on the first reverse or peril. Danger sees treason on every side, and the public journals and the clubs denounced more vehemently than ever the existence of the comité Autrichien, of which the queen was the centre. This report was universally believed by the nation, and only cost the queen her popularity during the peace, but during the war it might cost her her life. Thus, formerly accused of betraying the peace, this unfortunate family was now accused of betraying the war. In false positions every thing is a danger; the king comprehended the extent of his perils, and hastened to avert the most impending.
He despatched a secret emissary to the king of Prussia and the emperor, to entreat them, as they valued his safety, to suspend hostilities, and to precede the invasion by a conciliating manifesto, which might allow France to retire from the contest without disgrace, and would place the life of the royal family under the safeguard of the nation. This secret agent was Mallet-Dupan, a young journalist of Geneva, established in France, and mixed up with the counter-revolutionary movement. Mallet-Dupan was attached to the monarchy by principle, and to the king by personal devotion. He left Paris under pretext of returning to Geneva, and from thence went to Germany, where he had an interview with the Maréchal de Castries, the foreign confidant of Louis XVI., and one of the leaders of the emigrés. Accredited by the Duc de Castries, he presented himself at Coblentz to the Duke of Brunswick, at Frankfort to the ministers of the king of Prussia and the emperor; they however refused to place any faith in his communications, unless he produced a letter in the king's own hand. On this the king transmitted him a slip of paper, about two inches long, on which was written: "The person who will produce this note knows my intentions; implicit credence may be given to all he says in my name." This royal sign of recognition gave Mallet-Dupan access to the cabinets of the coalition.
Conferences were opened between the French negotiator, the Comte de Cobentzel, the Comte d'Haugwitz, and general Heyman, the plenipotentiaries of the emperor, and the king of Prussia. These ministers, after having examined the credentials of Mallet-Dupan, listened to his communications. They were to the effect that "the king alike prayed and exhorted the emigrés not to cause the approaching war to lose its appearance of power against power, by taking part in it, in the name of the re-establishment of the monarchy. Any other line of conduct would produce a civil war, endanger the lives of the king and queen, destroy the throne, and occasion a general massacre of the royalists. The king added, that he besought the sovereigns who had taken up arms in his cause, to separate, in their manifesto, the faction of the Jacobins from the nation, and the liberty of the people from the anarchy that convulsed them; to declare formally and energetically to the Assembly, the administrative and municipal bodies, that their lives should be answerable for all and every attempt against the sacred persons of the king, the queen, and their children; and to announce to the nation that no dismemberment would follow the war, that they would treat for peace with the king alone, and that in consequence the Assembly should hasten to give him the most perfect liberty, in order to enable him to negotiate in the name of his people with the allied powers."
Mallet-Dupan explained the sense of these instructions with that enlightened good sense, and that devoted attachment to the king that marked him; he painted in the most lively colours the interior of the Tuileries, and the terror to which the royal family was a prey.
The negotiators were moved almost to tears, and promised to communicate these impressions to their sovereigns, and gave Mallet-Dupan the assurance that the intentions of the king should be the measure of the language which the manifesto of the coalition would address to the French nation.
They did not however dissimulate their astonishment at the fact that the language of the emigrant princes at Coblentz was so opposed to the views of the king at Paris. "They openly manifest," said they, "the intention of re-conquering the kingdom for the counter-revolution, of rendering themselves independent, of dethroning their brother and proclaiming a regency." The confidant of Louis XVI. left for Geneva after this conference; whilst the emperor, the king of Prussia, the principal princes of the confederation, the ministers, the generals, and the Duke of Brunswick went to Mayence. Mayence, where the fêtes were interrupted by the councils, became for some days the head-quarters of the monarchs, and there, at the instigation of the emigrés, extreme resolutions were adopted. It was resolved to combat a revolution that but increased in proportion as it received indulgence. The supplications of Louis XVI., and the warnings of Dupan were forgotten, and the plan of the campaign was fixed.
XVII.
The emperor was to have the supreme control of the war in Belgium, where his army was to be commanded by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen. Fifteen thousand men were to cover the right of the Prussians, and affect a junction with them at Longwy. Twenty thousand more of the emperor's troops, commanded by the Prince de Hohenlohe, were to establish themselves between the Rhine and the Moselle, cover the Prussian left, and operate upon Landau, Sarrelouis, and Thionville. A third corps, under Prince Esterhazy, and strengthened by five thousand emigrés under the Prince de Condé, would threaten the frontiers from Switzerland to Philipsbourg, and the king of Sardinia would have an army of observation on the Var and the Isère. These dispositions made, it was resolved to reply to terror by terror, and to publish in the name of the generalissimo the Duke of Brunswick, a manifesto, which would leave the French revolution no other alternative than submission or death.