“M. de Cazalès, whom a short time much improved, expressed himself to that effect with much energy. We beheld, with delight, the Prussians, as they filed off through the streets of Coblentz, on their march to our frontiers. ‘Foolish boys,’ he exclaimed, ‘you admire, with enthusiasm, those troops and all their train. You rejoice at their march; you ought rather to shudder at it. For my own part, I should wish to see these soldiers, to the last man of them, plunged in the Rhine. Wo be to them who incite foreigners to invade their country! O my friends, the French nobility will not survive this atrocity! They will have the affliction of expiring far from the places of their birth. I am more guilty than any other, for I see it, and yet I act like all the rest; but my only excuse is that I cannot prevent the catastrophe. I repeat, wo to them who call in foreigners against their country, and trust in them.’
“How oracular these last words! Facts would have speedily convinced us of their truth, had we been less infatuated, or had the multitude been capable of reasoning and acting with propriety; but we were destined to enrich history with one of those lessons that are most entitled to the meditation of mankind. We might be estimated at 20 or 25,000 men under arms; and certainly, such a force, filled with ardour and devotion, fighting for its own interests, maintaining an understanding with the sympathetic elements of the interior, acting against a nation, shaken to its foundation and convulsed by the agitation of new rights, not yet established and but imperfectly understood, might be capable of striking decisive blows. But it was not upon our strength, our success, our activity, that the foreigners relied for the attainment of their views. Accordingly, under the pretence of employing that influence and of directing its operation, as they said, against several points at once, they annihilated us by parcelling out our numbers, and by making, as it were, prisoners of us in the middle of their different corps. In this way, 6000 of us, under the Prince of Condé, were marched against Alsace; 4000, under the Duke of Bourbon were to act in Flanders, and from 12 to 15,000 continued in the centre, under command of the King’s two brothers, to co-operate in the invasion of Champagne.
“It had been the plan and wish of our Princes, that Monsieur, as heir to the crown and the natural representative of Louis XVI., should, on account of his captivity, proclaim himself Regent of the kingdom, the moment he set foot on the French territory; that he should march with his emigrants at the head of the expedition, and that the allies, in his rear, should be considered only as auxiliaries. But the allies treated the plan with derision, and confined us to a station at their tail, under the orders and at the will and pleasure of the Generalissimo, Brunswick, who caused us to be preceded by the most absurd of manifestoes; from the ridicule and odium of which, however, he at least saved us.
“It is but just, however, to acknowledge that this treatment had not escaped the foresight of some experienced and better advised heads among us. They had accordingly suggested, it was said, in the Council of the Princes, that we should throw ourselves, before the arrival of the allies, on some point of France, and maintain a civil war there by ourselves. Others more desperate, or more ardent, were of opinion that we should nobly seize upon the states of the Elector of Treves, our benefactor; occupy the town and fortress of Coblentz, and establish there a central rallying point, or point of support, independent of the Germanic body; and when we exclaimed against such perfidy and ingratitude, their answer was:—‘Desperate evils called for desperate remedies.’ It is impossible to say what might have been the result of such resolutions, which were, however, more consistent with the bold spirit of enterprize, that characterizes the present times, than with the state of manners as they then existed. They were, therefore, unattended to, and besides, the opportunity had slipped by; we were too closely involved in the midst of foreigners; we were already in their power, and our destiny was to be fulfilled!...
“As for us who formed the multitude, we were far from foreseeing the calamities that were to attend us. We began our march in high spirits. There was not one of us who did not expect to be, in a fortnight from that moment, at home, triumphant in the midst of his submissive, humiliated, and increased vassals. Our confidence would not have endured a single observation or doubt upon that head. Of this I am about to give an instance, which though personal and very trifling in itself, will not be the less characteristic with respect to us all. We were marching through the city of Treves; one of my granduncles had, during the war of the succession, been Governor for Louis XIV. while we retained[we retained] possession of it. I went to see his tomb, which is in a chapel, belonging to the Carthusians of that town. The ardour of my youth and the emotion of the moment determined me to erect a small monument to his memory, with a superb inscription, suitable to the circumstances. I entertained no doubt of executing my wish. The good friars were of a different way of thinking; the prior wished me to arrange the matter with the Abbé, a kind of bishop, and of German bishop. His reserve and coldness, in spite of his numerous coats of arms, prepossessed me very much against him, when I communicated my chivalrous project; but when, after some circumlocution, he declared that under the present circumstances ... prudence,—discretion,—if the French were to enter the place—At these last words, my indignation was extreme; it was such that I did not wait to utter a single word in reply. I instantly hurried away, with a mingled laugh of contempt and anger, convinced that I had left the most horrible Jacobin in existence behind me; and nothing but my natural generosity and respect for my own character could have prevented me calling in my comrades, who would have certainly pulled down the chapel. But alas! the abbot saw farther than I did! Three weeks had not elapsed before the republicans were in Treves, the poor abbé put to flight, and the ashes of my good uncle profaned by the infidels.
“But no sooner were we in full operation, no sooner had we set foot on French ground, than it became no difficult matter, except in cases of downright stupidity and blindness, to comprehend that it actually might be just possible that we had been the dupes of our own folly. We found ourselves in the midst of the Prussians, who fettered all our movements; we could not take a step in advance, to the right or to the left, without their permission, and they never granted it. Our subsistence, all our resources, depended solely upon their will; we had the shame of appearing as slaves on the soil where we aspired to reign.
“As for our countrymen, instead of receiving us as their deliverers, as we had been convinced they would, they only gave us proofs of dislike and aversion. With the exception of a few country gentlemen or others who joined us, the whole mass of the population fled at our approach; we were treated as enemies, with the look of reproach and the stern silence of reprobation. They seemed to say to us: ‘Do you not shudder then at thus staining your country’s soil? Are you not Frenchmen by birth? Do your hearts then make no appeal to you in favour of your native land? You say you are wronged; but what wrong, what injury ever gave to a son the right or the wish to tear open the bosom of his mother?... We are told that in ancient times a fiery patrician, Coriolanus, was infamous enough to fight against his country, but he had at least the merit of uniting elevated sentiments with his furious passion; he came forward with a victorious arm; he imposed his own conditions; he was not dragged along at the tail of barbarous foreigners; he commanded them, and he also suffered himself to be moved to compassion. Can you be unsusceptible of that tenderness, and do you not tremble at our maledictions, which will be perpetuated on you by our children? At any rate, whatever may be your success, it will not equal your mortifications! You pretend to come for the purpose of governing, and you will have brought your masters with you.’
“At Verdun and at Estain, we were quartered in the town. Some of my comrades and myself were lodged in a handsome house, but all the furniture and all the proprietors had disappeared, with the exception of two very pretty young ladies, who put us in possession of it. This last circumstance seemed a favourable omen, we took the opportunity of remarking it to them, and were desirous of ingratiating ourselves by our politeness and attentions. ‘Gentlemen,’ said one of the two amazons in rather a sharp tone, ‘we have remained, because we have felt that we had the courage to tell you, face to face, that our lovers are in arms against you, and that they have our prayers at least as much as our hearts.’ This was intelligible language; we wished for no more of it, and even shifted our quarters to another house.
“Be it as it may, we were at length in France, and in the rear of that Prussian army, which pushed forward its brilliant successes, leaving us three or four marches behind. And, whether their object was to turn us into ridicule, because we had assured them that all the towns would throw open their gates on our appearance, or to rid themselves of our importunities, they charged us with the siege of Thionville. We made our approaches, and, by a fantastical singularity, the marine corps found itself precisely opposed to the national volunteers of Brest. When they recognised each other, it is impossible to describe the volley of invectives and insults that was instantly exchanged.
“Thionville is, however, as it is known, one of the strongest places, and we found the reduction of it impossible with our limited means, for we were in want of every thing; and it absolutely required an important negociation to obtain two 24-pounders from the Austrians at Luxembourg. After a great deal of solicitation and hesitation, the two pieces were at length brought in triumph, and it was with this formidable train, that we summoned the place, and fired at night, in pure waste of powder, some hundreds of cannon shot. On my return from emigration, having fallen by chance into company with General de Wimphen, who commanded the fortress, he asked me, ‘what could have been our intention, or the meaning of the jest we had thus attempted to play off?’ ‘It was done, I believe,’ said I, ‘because reliance was placed upon you.’ ‘But even had that been the case,’ said he, ‘you still ought to have furnished me with an excuse for surrendering; you could not expect that I should solicit you to attack me.’ Every thing was on a proportionate scale: the slightest sally spread confusion through all our forces; the most trifling circumstance was an event with us; the cause was obvious; we were unacquainted with every thing, and accordingly, setting courage aside, I do not scruple to believe that a hundred picked men of the Imperial guard would have routed the whole of our army. Happily, our adversaries were as ignorant as ourselves, all were pigmies then, although in a very short time giants were found every where.