With her entry the trial was resumed and the file of witnesses continued. It was as monotonous and as vague as before. Even Manuel, whom she had feared, was vague, and the very servants of the prison (though they had been witnesses to conspiracy) were uncertain and rambling. And this fatuity of the witnesses who were so solemnly and so strictly examined did not proceed from the turmoil of the time alone, nor even from the certitude which all then had (and which history has now) upon the past action of the Queen in cherishing the hope of foreign domination and in procuring it: rather did it proceed from the fact that these dreadful days were filled not with a judicial but with a political action, and that the Court was met not to establish truths at once unprovable and glaring, but to see whether or no the Revolution could dare to condemn the prisoner. It was an act of War and a challenge to What lay entrenched up there before Maubeuge, training its guns on the last hope, the ragged army in the valley of Avesnes below.
If all the witnesses which history possesses to-day, if Moleville, Fersen, Mallet, could have been brought into that Court and have had the Truth dragged from them, it would have affected the issue very little. One thing could alone affect that issue, the news of victory: and no news came. All reports from the frontier had ceased.
The lights in the Court were lit, smoky and few. The air, already foul from the large concourse, grew heavy even for the free; for the sickened prisoner it became intolerable as the night hours drew in—six dark interminable hours. She heard the succeeding witnesses distantly, more distantly. Her head was troubled and her injured eyesight failed her. It was very late. The droning of the night was in her ears. She vaguely knew at last that there was a movement around her and that the Court was rising. She asked faintly for water. Busne, the officer in guard of her, brought it to her and she drank. As he supported her with some respect down the short passage to her cell he heard her murmuring: “I cannot see.... I cannot see.... I have come to the end....”
She lay down when her doors had received her, and just before midnight she fell asleep. She slept deeply and for the last time.
Tuesday, October 15.
Oct. 15, 1793. Before Maubeuge, 6 a.m.
A little before dawn the French bugles upon the frontier roused the troops of Avesnes; their calls ran down the line, they passed from the Diane to the Générale, the woods before them sent back echoes, and soon the army moved. Far off upon the left Fromentin, upon the far right Duquesnoy, began marching forwards and inwards, converging, but the main body in the centre took the high road, which, if they could force its passage, would lead them straight to Maubeuge.
The sun was still level over the glinting wet fields when Carnot came to the summit of the long swell whence could be perceived, over an intervening hollow, the village of Dourlers, and above it the level fringe of trees which held the Austrian cannon; an impregnable crest upon whose security Coburg and the Allies founded the certitude of victory. The guns began.
Among the batteries of the French (too few for their task) two batteries, one of sixteen-pounders, the other of twelve, were the gift of the city of Paris. By some accident these, though ill manned, silenced the Austrian fire at one critical and central point above the Dourlers itself and close to the high road. Whether the French aptitude for this arm had helped to train the volunteers of the city, or whether these had such a leaven of trained men as sufficed to turn the scale, or whether (as is more probable) some error or difficulty upon the opposing slope or some chance shot had put the invaders out of action, cannot be known. Carnot seized upon the moment and ordered the charge. As his columns advanced to carry Dourlers he sent word at full speed to either wing that each must time itself by the centre, and forbade an advance upon the left or right until the high road should be forced and the centre of the Austrian position pierced or confused.