The Duc de Lauzun commanded under La Fayette, and was called general Biron. He was a man of the court, who had gone over in all sincerity to the side of the people. Young, handsome, chivalrous, with that intrepid gaiety which plays with death, he carried aristocratic honour into republican ranks. Loved by the soldiers, adored by the women, at his ease in camps, a roué in courts, he was of that school of sparkling vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France. It was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy. Friend of the Duc d'Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him. All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation. He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was always ready to be the soldier, but never the accomplice. He did not betray the king, and always preserved a deep feeling of pity and sympathy for the queen; with an intense love for philosophy and liberty, instead of fomenting them by sedition, he defended them by war. He changed devotion to kings into devotion to his country. This noble cause, and the sorrows of the Revolution gave to his character a more manly stamp, and made him fight and die with the conscience of a hero.
He was encamped at Quievrain with 10,000 men, and advanced against the Austrian general Beaulieu, who occupied the heights of Mons, with a very weak army. Two regiments of dragoons, who formed Biron's advanced guard, were seized with a sudden panic on beholding Beaulieu's troops. The soldiers cried out treachery, and in vain did their officers attempt to rally them; they turned bridle and scattered disorder and fear throughout the ranks. The army gave way and mechanically followed the current of flight. Biron and his aides-de-camp threw themselves into the centre of the troops to stay and to rally them. They struck at them with their swords, and fired at them. The camp of Quievrain, the military chest, the carriage of Biron himself, were plundered by the fugitives.
Whilst this defeat, without a battle, humiliated the French army, in its first step, at Quievrain, bloody assassinations stained our flag at Lille. General Dillon had left that city, the enemy showed itself on the plain to the number of nine hundred men. At its appearance only, the French cavalry uttered treacherous cries, and passing by the infantry, fled to Lille, without being followed, abandoning its artillery, carriages, and baggage. Dillon, hurried along by his squadrons to Lille, was there massacred by his own soldiers. His colonel of engineers, Berthois, fell beside his general, beneath the bayonets of the cowards who abandoned him. The dead bodies of these two victims of fear were hung up in the Place d'Armes, and then delivered up by the malcontents to the insults of the populace of Lille, who dragged their mutilated carcases along the streets. Thus commenced in shame and crime those wars of the Revolution which were destined to produce, during twenty years, so much heroism, and so much military virtue. Anarchy had penetrated to the camps, honour was there no longer: order and honour are the two necessities of an army. In anarchy there is still a nation—without discipline there is no longer an army.
XIII.
Paris was in consternation at this news; the Assembly greatly troubled, the Girondists trembled, the Jacobins were vociferous in their imprecations against the traitors. Foreign courts and the emigrants had no doubt of an easy triumph in a few marches over a revolution which was afraid of its very shadow. La Fayette, without having been attacked, fell back, very prudently, on Givet. Rochambeau sent in his resignation as commandant of the army of the north. Marshal Luckner was nominated in his place. La Fayette, much dissatisfied, kept the command of the central army.
Luckner was upwards of seventy years of age, but retained all the fire and activity of the warrior; he only required genius to have been a great general. He had a reputation for complaisance, which sufficed for every thing. It is a great advantage for a general to be a stranger in the country in which he is serving. He has no one jealous of him: his superiority is pardoned, and presumed if it do not exist, in order to crush his rivals: such was old Luckner's position. He was a German,—pupil of the great Frederic, with whom he had served with éclat during the seven years' war as commandant of the vanguard, at the moment when Frederic changed the war, and commenced its tactics. The Duc de Choiseul was desirous of depriving Prussia of a general of this great school, to teach the modern art of battles to French generals. He had attracted Luckner from his country by force of temptations, fortune, and honours. The national Assembly, from respect to the memory of the philosopher king, had preserved to Luckner the pension of 60,000 francs which had been paid to him during the Revolution. Luckner, indifferent to constitutions, believed himself a revolutionist from gratitude. He was almost the only one amongst the ancient general officers who had not emigrated. Surrounded by a brilliant staff of young officers of the party of La Fayette, Charles Lameth, du Jarri, Mathieu de Montmorency, he believed he had the opinions which they instilled into him. The king caressed, the Assembly flattered, the army respected, him. The nation saw in him the mysterious genius of the old war coming to give lessons of victory to the untried patriotism of the Revolution, and concealing its infinite resources under the bluntness of his exterior, and the obscure Germanism of his language. They addressed to him, from all sides, homage as though he were an unknown God. He did not deserve either this adoration, or the outrages with which he was soon after overwhelmed. He was a brave and coarse soldier, as misplaced in courts as in clubs. For some days he was an idol, then the plaything of the Jacobins, who, at last, threw him to the guillotine, without his being able to comprehend either his popularity or his crime.
XIV.
Berthier, who afterwards became Napoleon's right hand, was then the head of Luckner's staff. The old general seized, with warlike instinct, on Dumouriez's bold plan. He had entered at the head of 22,000 men on the Austrian territory at Courtray and Menin. Biron and Valence, his two seconds in command, entreated him to remain there, and Dumouriez, in his letters, urged him in similar manner. On arriving at Lille, Dumouriez learnt that Luckner had suddenly retreated on Valenciennes, after having burnt the suburbs of Courtray; thus giving, on our frontier, the signal of hesitation and retreat.
The Belgian population, their impulses thus checked by the disasters or timidity of France, lost all hope, and bent beneath the Austrian yoke. General Montesquiou collected the army of the south with difficulty. The king of the Sardinians concentrated a large force on the Var. The advanced guard of La Fayette, posted at Gliswel, at a league from Maubeuge, was beaten by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, at the head of 12,000 men. The great invasion of the Duke of Brunswick, in Champagne, was preparing. The emigration took off the officers, desertion diminished our soldiery. The clubs disseminated distrust against the commanders of our strong places.
The Girondists were urging on rebellion, the Jacobins were exciting the army to anarchy, the volunteers did not rise, the ministry was null, the Austrian committee of the Tuileries corresponded with various powers, not to deceive the nation, but to save the lives of the king and his family. A suspected government, hostile assembly, seditious clubs, a national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary journalism, dark conspiracies, factious municipality, a conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face, having the same spoil to contend for—the monarchy, and struggling for pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people; such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst forth with disasters and crimes. The Girondists and Jacobins united for a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could best destroy the powerless constitution which separated them. The bourgeoisie personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La Fayette, alone remained attached to the constitution. The Gironde, from the tribune itself, made that appeal to the people against the king which it was subsequently doomed to make in vain in favour of the king against the Jacobins. In order to control the city, Brissot, Roland, Pétion, excited the suburbs, those capitals of miseries and seditions. Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths, then appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue; such were about to appear under the conspiring hand of the Girondists and demagogues.