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Against you, who, after the revolution of the 10th of August, sought to bring to the scaffold those who had effected it. Against you, who have never ceased in a course which involved the destruction of Paris. Against you, who desired to save the tyrant. Against you, who conspired with Dumouriez. Against you, who fiercely persecuted the same patriots whose heads Dumouriez demanded.
Next to Dumouriez the principal members of the new ministry were the Genevese Clavière, one of Mirabeau's advisers, and the promoter of the assignats, Servan, a meritorious officer, better known to us as a meritorious military historian; and Roland, whose wife shared, on a lower scale, the social influence and intellectual celebrity of Madame de Staël.
"I have been waiting for you impatiently." "So I suspected. But I was obliged to wait until I could leave without being noticed." "Did you manage it?" "Yes; Talma was relating a story about Marat and Dumouriez. Interesting as it was, I deprived myself of the pleasure, and here I am."
The royalist element vanished from its ranks. Lafayette made one last attempt to uphold the Constitution, but his men repulsed him. He went over to imperial territory, and was detained in prison as the guilty author of the Revolution. Dumouriez succeeded to his command, and adhered to the new government.
Dumouriez raised his hand, and gesticulated to Collot d'Herbois. Robespierre rose, smiled sternly on Dumouriez, and said, "I am not one of those who believe it is utterly impossible for a minister to be a patriot, and I accept with pleasure the promises that M. Dumouriez has just given us.
Dumouriez, later so renowned as a general, and Mirabeau, the great statesman and orator, had both been members of the French army of occupation which reduced Corsica to submission. The latter now recalled his misdeed with sorrow and shame in an impassioned plea for amnesty to all political offenders, including Paoli. There was bitter opposition, but the great orator prevailed.
As it was brought him he asked the hostess whether the Citizen-deputy La Boulaye, Commissioner to the army of Dumouriez, had passed that way. Upon being informed that the Deputy was even then within the inn, the courier got down from his horse and demanded to be taken to him. The hostess led him into the common-room, and pointed out the Deputy.
Berthier, who afterwards became Napoleon's right hand, was then the head of Luckner's staff. The old general seized, with warlike instinct, on Dumouriez's bold plan. He had entered at the head of 22,000 men on the Austrian territory at Courtray and Menin. Biron and Valence, his two seconds in command, entreated him to remain there, and Dumouriez, in his letters, urged him in similar manner.
Abandoned and fugitive, he escaped to Dantzig, and wandered for thirty years over Europe and America, carrying in his heart the memory of his country. The lovely Countess of Mnizeck languished and died of grief with Poland. Dumouriez wept for this heroine, adored in a country wherein he said the women are more men than the men.
The court named this ministry, which was appointed during the month of March, le Ministere Sans-Culotte. The first time Roland appeared at the chateau with strings in his shoes and a round hat, contrary to etiquette, the master of the ceremonies refused to admit him. Obliged, however, to give way, he said, despairingly, to Dumouriez, pointing to Roland: "Ah, sir no buckles in his shoes."
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