Maubeuge was the pivot of that door. Upon Maubeuge the last effort of the invaders would be made. The rolling up of the defending line of strongholds would proceed until Maubeuge alone should be left to menace the advance of the invasion. Maubeuge once fallen, all the Revolution also fell.
So much has been written to explain the failure of the Allies and the ultimate triumph of France in that struggle, that this prime truth—the all-importance of Maubeuge—clear enough to the people of the time, has grown obscured.[[37]] The long debates of the Allies, the policy of the Cabinet in London, the diversion upon Dunkirk, all these and many other matters are given a weight far beyond their due in the military problem of ’93. The road from the base of the Allies to their objective in Paris lay right through the quadrilateral of fortresses, Mons, Condé, Valenciennes, Maubeuge. Mons was theirs; Condé, Valenciennes and Maubeuge blocked their advance at its outset. A deflection to the left was rendered impossible by the Ardennes. A deflection to the right, possible enough, added, for every degree of such deflection, an added peril to the communication of the advance, laying the flank of the communications open to attack from whatever French garrison might have been left uncaptured. All these garrisons must be accounted for before Coburg could march on Paris. Mons, as I have said, was in Austrian hands and in Austrian territory; Condé, nay, Valenciennes, might fall successively to the invader; but so long as Maubeuge remained untaken the march upon Paris was blocked.
[37]. The great authority of Jomini laid the foundation of this misconception, one which the reader might (perhaps erroneously) find implied in Mr. Fortescue’s admirable account of this campaign; but the truth is that it is impossible to accumulate detail—as a military historian is bound to do—especially where long cordons are opposed to each other, without danger of losing sight of the vital points of the line.
There were not wanting at that moment critics who demanded an immediate march on the capital, especially as the summer waxed, as the peril of the Queen increased, and as the immobility of the Allies gave time for the martial law of the Terror to do its work, and to raise its swarms of recruits from all the country-sides: these critics were in error; Coburg at the head of the Austrian army was right. Poor as was the quality of the French troops opposed to him, and anarchic as was their constantly changing command, to have left a place of refuge whither they could concentrate and whence they could operate in a body upon his lengthening communications, as he pressed on to Paris through hostile country, would have been mad cavalry work, not generalship. Maubeuge with its entrenched camp, Maubeuge open to continual reinforcement from all the French country that lay south and west of it, was essential to his final advance. That Maubeuge stood untaken transformed the war, and, in spite of every disturbing factor in the complex problem, it should be a fixed datum in history that the resistance of Maubeuge and the consequent charge at Wattignies decided ’93 as surely as the German artillery at St. Privat decided 1870. Maubeuge was the hinge of all the campaign.
Coburg, as the summer heightened, set out to pocket one by one the supports of that last position: he easily succeeded.
In Paris a vague sense of doom filled all the leaders, but a fever of violent struggle as well.... The Queen in her prison saw once again (and shuddered at it) the dark face of Drouet and heard his threatening voice.
All France had risen. There was civil war in the west and in the north. A Norman woman had murdered Marat. Mayence was strictly held all round about with the men of Marseilles raging within; and as for the Barrier of Fortresses to the north, Coburg now held them in the hollow of his hand.
A fortnight after the Dauphin had been taken from the Queen, the fortress of Condé fell; it had fallen from lack of food. The Council of Maubeuge heard that news. Valenciennes would come next along the line—then, they! They wrote to the Committee of Public Safety a letter, which may still be read in the archives of the town, demanding provisions. None came.