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Dumouriez, Custine, Biron, Dillon, &c. are doing wonders, in spite of the season; but the laurel is an ever-green, and these heroes gather it equally among the snows of the Alps, and the fogs of Belgium. If we may credit the French papers too, what they call the cause of liberty is not less successfully propagated by the pen than the sword.
"I understand you were sent here to recover from a wound you received three months ago at Jemappes, and to take charge of other invalided soldiers. But seemingly, your invalids do not number more than a half-dozen out of the fifty or sixty men that are with you. How is it then, that you do not return with these to Dumouriez?"
Presents arrive from Tippoo Sahib. The Dauphin. The Assembly passes Decrees against the Priests and the Emigrants. Misconduct of the Emigrants. Louis refuses his Assent to the Decrees. He issues a Circular condemning Emigration. Death of Leopold. Murder of Gustavus of Sweden Violence of Vergniaud. The Ministers resign. A Girondin Ministry is appointed. Character of Dumouriez.
Rapidly reducing this motley force to order, Kellermann, with 22,000 men, marched from Metz, on September 4th, for Chalons with the utmost celerity, reached Bar before the Prussians, saved the magazines on the upper Saone and Marne, and put himself in a situation to communicate with Dumouriez.
It was not so with the convention; it acted with a promptitude, a boldness, a firmness, and, above all, with a precision in attaining its object, which rendered success certain. When we know what we want, and desire it strongly and speedily, we nearly always attain our object. This quality was wanting in Dumouriez, and the want impeded his audacity and deterred his partisans.
The whole of the fortifications on the Rhine were yielded for the sake of saving Mannheim from bombardment. In the Austrian Netherlands, the old government had already been abolished, and the whole country been transformed into a Belgian republic by Dumouriez.
In the following September, while General Dumouriez by boldness and adroit negotiations was arresting the progress of the Allies in the defiles of the Argonne, bodies of paid murderers butchered the royalist prisoners who crowded the gaols of Paris, with a view of influencing the elections to a new Convention which met to proclaim the abolition of royalty.
Both are misleading, for they wrote long after, and their memory is constantly at fault. Dumouriez wrote to excuse his defection, and Talleyrand to cast a decent veil over actions which were injurious to him at the Restoration. The Necker family are exasperating, because they are generally wrong in their dates. Madame Campan wished to recover her position, which the fall of the Empire had ruined.
After his return to Paris, Dumouriez passed a year in the society of the literary men and women of light fame who gave to the society of the period the spirit and the tone of a constant orgy. Forming an attachment with an old acquaintance of Madame Du Barry, he knew this parvenue courtezan, whom libertinism had elevated nearly to the throne.
Dumouriez went over to the Austrian camp with the duc de Chartres, colonel Thouvenot, and two squadrons of Berchiny. The rest of his army went to the camp at Famars, and joined the troops commanded by Dampierre.
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