From this height Kellermann saw come in succession, from the white mist of the morning, and glitter in the sunshine, the countless Prussian cavalry, which must envelop him, as in a net, if he were driven from his position. About noon the Duke of Brunswick, having formed his whole army into two lines, and decided on his plan of the day, was seen to detach himself from the centre, and advance toward the declivities of Gizaucourt and La Lune, at the head of a body of infantry, cavalry, and three batteries. Fresh troops filled up the space these left.
Such was the horizon of tents, bayonets, horses, cannon, and staff which displayed itself on September 20th, in the hollows and ravines of Champagne. At the same hour the convention[37]] began its sittings and deliberations as to a monarchy or a republic. Within and without, France and liberty sported with destiny.
The exterior aspect of the two armies seemed to declare beforehand the issue of the campaign. On the side of the Prussians, one hundred ten thousand combatants; a system of tactics the inheritance of the Great Frederick; discipline, which converted battalions into machines of war, and which, destroying all personal will in the soldier, made him bend submissively to the thought and voice of his officers; an infantry solid and impenetrable as walls of iron; cavalry mounted on the splendid horses of Mecklenburg, whose docility, well-controlled ardor, and high courage were not alarmed either at the fire of artillery nor the glitter of cold steel; officers trained from their infancy to fighting as a trade, born, as it were, in uniforms, knowing their troops and known to them, exercising over their soldiers the twofold ascendency of nobility and command; as auxiliaries, the picked regiments of the Austrian Army, recently from the banks of the Danube, where they had been fighting against the Turks; the emigrant French nobility, bearing with them all the great names of the monarchy, every soldier of whom fought for his own cause and had his individual injuries to avenge—his King to save, his country to recover at the end of his bayonet or the point of his sabre; Prussian generals, all pupils of a military king, having to maintain the superiority of their renown in Europe; a generalissimo which Germany proclaimed its Agamemnon, and which the genius of Frederick covered with a prestige of invincibility; and, also, a young King, brave, adored by his people, dear to his troops, avenger of the cause of all kings, accompanied by representatives of every court on the field of battle, and supplying the inexperience of war by a personal bravery which forgot its rank in the sole consideration of its honor—such was the Prussian army.
In the French camp a numerical inferiority of one against three; regiments reduced to three or four hundred men by the effect of the laws of 1790, which only admitted volunteers; these regiments, deprived of their best officers by emigration, which had induced more than half to go to the enemy's soil, and by the sudden creation of one hundred battalions of volunteers, at the head of which they had placed the officers remaining in France as instructors; these battalions and regiments, without any esprit de corps, regarding each other with jealousy or contempt; two feelings in the same army—the spirit of discipline in the old ranks, the spirit of insubordination in the new corps; old officers suspecting their men, soldiers doubtful of their officers; a cavalry ill equipped and badly mounted; an infantry competent and firm in regiments, raw and weak in battalions; pay in arrear and paid in assignats greatly depreciated; insufficiently armed; uniforms various, threadbare, torn, often in tatters; many soldiers without shoes, or substituting handfuls of hay tied round the legs with cord; the troops arriving from different armies and provinces, unknown to each other, and scarcely knowing the name of the generals under whom they had been enlisted—these generals themselves young and rash, passing suddenly from obeying to command, or, old and methodical, unable to make their formal modes comply with the dash required in desperate warfare; and, finally, at the head of this incongruous army, a general-in-chief fifty-three years of age, new to war, whom everybody had a right to doubt, mistrustful of his troops, at variance with his second in command, at issue with his government, whose daring yet dilatory plan was not understood by any, and who had neither services in the past nor the spell of victory on his sword to give authority or confidence to his command—such were the French at Valmy. But the enthusiasm of the country and the Revolution struggled in the heart of this army, and the genius of war inspired the soul of Dumouriez.
Uneasy as to Kellermann's position, Dumouriez, on horseback from the dawn of day, visited his line, extended his troops between Sainte-Menehould and Gizaucourt, and galloped toward Valmy in order that he might the better judge himself of the intentions of the Duke of Brunswick and the point on which the Prussians were to concentrate their efforts. He there found Kellermann giving his final orders to the generals, who, on his left and right, were to have the responsibility of the day. One of these was General Valence, and the other the Duc de Chartres.
The Duc de Chartres[38] had been welcomed by the old soldiers as a prince, by the new ones as a patriot, by all as a comrade. His intrepidity did not carry him away; he controlled it, and it left him that quickness of perception and that coolness so essential to a general; amid the hottest fire he neither quickened nor slackened his pace, for his ardor was as much the effect of reflection as of calculation, and as grave as duty. His familiarity—martial with the officers, soldierly with the soldiers, patriotic with the citizens—caused them to forgive him for being a prince. But beneath the exterior of a soldier of the people lurked the arrière pensée of a prince of the blood; and he plunged into all the events of the Revolution with the entire yet skilful abandon of a mastermind. Men feared, in spite of his bravery and his exalted enthusiasm for his country, to catch a glimpse of a throne raised upon its own ruins and by the hands of a republic. This presentiment, which invariably precedes great names and destinies, seemed to reveal to the army that, of all the leaders of the Revolution, he might one day be the most useful or the most fatal to liberty.
Dumouriez, who had seen the young Duc de Chartres with the army at Luckner, was struck with his intrepidity and coolness during the action, and, perceiving a spark of no ordinary fire in this young man, resolved to attach him to himself.
The Prussians held the heights of La Lune, and had commenced descending them in battle array. The veteran troops of Frederick the Great, slow and measured in all their movements, displayed no rash impetuosity and left naught to chance.
On their side the French did not behold without a feeling of dread this immense and hitherto invincible army silently advance its first line in columns of attack, and extend its wings to pierce their centre and cut off all retreat, either on Châlons or Dumouriez. The soldiers remained motionless in their position, fearing to expose by a false movement the narrow battle-field on which they could defend themselves, but did not dare manœuvre. The Prussians descended half-way down the heights of La Lune, and then opened their fire both in front and flank.
On this attack Kellermann's artillery moved forward and took up its position in front of the infantry. More than twenty thousand balls were exchanged during two hours from one hundred twenty guns, which thundered from the sides of the opposite hills, as though they strove to batter a breach in the mountains. The Prussians, more exposed than the French, suffered more severely, and their fire began to slacken. Kellermann, who narrowly watched the enemy's movements, fancied he saw some confusion in their ranks, and charged at the head of a column to carry the guns. A Prussian battery, masked by an inequality in the ground, suddenly opened its fire on them, and Kellermann's horse, struck by a ball in the chest, fell on its rider. His aide-de-camp, Lieutenant-Colonel Lormier, was killed, and the head of the column, exposed on three sides to a withering fire, fell back in disorder, while Kellermann, disengaged and carried off by his troops, sought for a fresh charger. The Prussians, witnessing his fall and the retreat of his column, redoubled their fire, and a well-directed volley of shells silenced the French artillery.