FLIGHT AND IMPRISONMENT OF LAFAYETTE.
Imprisonment of Lafayette.
The plan of the campaign, adopted by the Duke of Brunswick, was to press rapidly forward, with his combined army, from the banks of the Rhine to Paris, cut off its supplies, and by famine to compel it to surrender. He would then destroy the liberal constitution, punish and disperse the friends of popular rights, and restore the king to the absolutism of the old régime. To oppose this formidable army of invasion, France had one corps of 14,000 men near Metz, and another of 33,000 at Sedan, under General Dumouriez. General Lafayette had been in command of the latter force; but, by his opposition to some of the radical measures of the Convention, had excited the hostility of the Paris mob and the Jacobin clubs. They had burned him in effigy at the Palais Royal, accused him of treason before the Assembly, and set a price upon his head. Argument was of no avail against the fury of the populace—in flight only was his safety. While thus pursued by the Jacobins of Paris as an aristocrat, he was arrested by a patrol of the Austrian army as a democrat. With the greatest secrecy, his captors hurried him to Olmutz, where he was thrown into close confinement, and subjected to the most cruel privations. It was two years before his friends could discover the place of his captivity. His wife and daughters then, after much difficulty and delay, succeeded in obtaining permission to share the glooms of his dungeon. It was not until after an imprisonment of five years that he was set at liberty, Napoleon commanding his release in tones which Austria did not dare to disregard.
Measures of defense.
The proclamation by the Assembly that the country was in danger, caused volunteers in large numbers to set out from every portion of France. From Paris alone, in three days, an army of 32,000 men, completely equipped, were on the advance to the scene of conflict. General Dumouriez, in command at Sedan, drew up his lines of defense before the defiles of Argoun, where he thought he could make the most effectual stand against the invading host. The Duke of Brunswick fell fiercely upon his left wing, and, breaking through, poured his troops like a flood into the plains of Champagne. For a time a terrific panic spread through the French army, and it became needful for Generals Dumouriez and Kellerman to unite their forces. In the mean time, the triumphant Prussians, defiling rapidly by Grandpré and Croix-aux-Bois, were approaching Chalons.
The French troops concentrated at Valmy. There they drew up in line of battle, to arrest the advance of their foes. The second line of the French army was commanded by the Duke of Chartes. The battle which ensued was one of the most memorable and hard-fought in French history. In the early morning a dense mist covered the field of conflict. At eleven o'clock the fog dispersed, and the sun came out brightly, revealing the Prussian columns advancing in beautiful order, with a glittering display of caparisoned horses and polished weapons, deploying with as much precision as if on a field of parade. The eye took in at a glance 100,000 men preparing for the death-struggle. It was, indeed, an imposing spectacle, for such hosts had then been rarely collected on any field of blood.
Battle of Valmy.