The Duc de Chartres, who for three hours had supported the fire of the Prussians at the decisive post of Valmy, without drawing a trigger, saw the danger of his general. He hastened to the second line, put himself at the head of the reserve of artillery, advanced to the plateau by the mill, covered the disorder of the centre, rallied the flying caissons, supported the fire, and checked the enemy's onset.
The Duke of Brunswick would not give the French time to strengthen their position, but formed three formidable columns of attack, supported by two wings of cavalry. These columns advanced in spite of the fire of the French batteries, and were about to crush beneath their masses the division of the Duc de Chartres, who at the mill of Valmy awaited the onset. Kellermann, who had renewed the line, formed his army into columns by battalions, sprang from his horse, and casting the bridle to his orderly, bade him lead it behind the ranks, showing the soldiers that he was resolved to conquer or die. "Comrades," cried Kellermann, in a voice of thunder, "the moment of victory is at hand. Let us suffer the enemy to advance, and then charge with the bayonet." Then waving his hat on the top of his sword, "Vive la nation!" cried he more enthusiastically than before; "let us conquer for her."
This cry of the general, repeated by the nearest battalions, and taken up successively by the rest, created an immense clamor like the country herself encouraging her defenders. This shout of the whole army, resounding from one hill to another, and heard above the cannon's roar, reassured the troops, and made the Duke of Brunswick pause, for such hearts promised equally terrible hands. Kellermann still advanced at the head of his column. The Duc de Chartres, his sword in one hand and a tricolored flag in the other, followed the horse artillery with the cavalry. The Duke of Brunswick, with the quick eye of a veteran soldier, and that economy of human life that characterizes an able general, saw that this attack would fail when opposed to such enthusiasm; and he re-formed the head of his columns, sounded the retreat, and slowly retired to his positions unpursued.
The fire ceased on both sides and the battle was as it were suspended until four in the evening, when the King of Prussia, indignant at the hesitation of his army, formed in person, and with the flower of his infantry and cavalry, three formidable columns of attack; then riding down the line, he bitterly reproached them with suffering the standard of the monarch to be thus humiliated. At the voice of their sovereign the troops marched to the conflict, and the King, surrounded by the Duke of Brunswick and his principal officers, marched in the first rank, exposed to the fire of the French, which mowed down his staff around him. Intrepid as the blood of Frederick, he commanded as a king jealous of the honor of his nation, and exposed himself like a soldier who holds his life but lightly compared to victory. All was in vain; the Prussian columns, assailed by the fire of twenty-four pieces of cannon, in position on the heights of Valmy, retreated at nightfall, leaving behind them eight hundred dead. Not to have been defeated was to the French army a victory. Kellermann felt this so fully that he assumed the name of Valmy in after-years,[39] and in his will bequeathed his heart to the village of that name, in order that it might repose on the theatre of his greatest renown, and sleep amid the companions of his first field.
While the French army fought and triumphed at Valmy, the Convention decreed the Republic at Paris.
Dumouriez returned to his camp amid the roar of Kellermann's cannon; but while he congratulated himself on the success of a day that strengthened the patriotic feelings of the army, and that rendered the first attack on the country fatal to her enemies, he was too clear-sighted not to perceive the faults of Kellermann and the temerity of his position. The Duke of Brunswick was on the morrow the same as he was the previous evening, and had, moreover, extended his right wing beyond Gizaucourt and cut off the route to Châlons.
Early on the morning of the 21st Dumouriez went to the camp of his colleague, and ordered him to pass the river Auve, and fall back on the camp of Dampierre, in the position previously assigned him. This position, less brilliant, yet more secure, strengthened and united the French army. Kellermann felt this and obeyed without a murmur.
The Prussians had lost so much time that they had no longer any to spare. The rainy season had already affected them, and the winter would be sufficient in itself to force them to retreat. The Duke of Brunswick lost ten days in observing the French army; and the rain and fever season surprised him, while yet undecided. The rains cut up the roads from Argonne, by which his convoys arrived from Verdun, while his soldiers, destitute of shelter and provisions, wandered about in the fields, the orchards and vineyards, plucking the unripe grapes which these inhabitants of the North tasted for the first time. Their stomachs, already weakened by bad living, were soon disordered, and they were attacked by that dysentery which is so fatal to the soldier; the contagion spread rapidly through the camp, and thinned the corps.
The situation of Dumouriez did not appear, however, less perilous to those who were not in the secret of his intentions. Hemmed in on the one side of Les Evêchés by the Prince de Hohenlohe; on the Paris side by the King of Prussia, the Prussians were within six leagues of Châlons, the émigrés still nearer. The Uhlans, the light cavalry of the Prussians, pillaged at the gates of Rheims, and between Châlons and the capital there was not a position or an army. Paris dreaded to find itself thus exposed. Kellermann, a brave, but susceptible general, shaken by the opinion in Paris, threatened to quit the camp and abandon his colleague to his fate. Dumouriez, employing alternately the ascendency of his rank and the seduction of his genius, passed, in order to detain him, from menace to entreaty, and thus gained day by day his victory of patience. Sometimes he threatened to deprive of their uniform and arms those who complained of the want of provisions, and drive them from the camp as cowards who were unworthy to suffer privations for their country. Eight battalions of fédérés, recently arrived from the camp at Châlons, and intoxicated with massacre and sedition, were those who most threatened the subordination of the camp, saying openly that the ancient officers were traitors, and that it was necessary to purge the army, as they had Paris, of its aristocrats. Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff and an escort of one hundred hussars. "Fellows," said he—"for I will not call you either citizens or soldiers—you see before you this artillery, behind you this cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels among you charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from among you, or denounce them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct." The battalions trembled and at once assumed the same spirit that pervaded the army.
The ancient feelings of honor were associated in the camps with patriotism, and Dumouriez encouraged it among his troops. Every day he received from Paris threats of dismissal, to which he replied in terms of defiance. "I will conceal my dismissal," he wrote, "until the day when I behold the flight of the enemy: I will then show it to my soldiers, and return to Paris, to suffer the punishment my country inflicts on me for having saved her in spite of herself."