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They could not fight as they had been accustomed to do, from behind hedges, and with every advantage of locality on their side. They had thrown themselves on the veteran troops, who had signalized themselves at Valmy and Mayence, with a courage that amounted to desperation, but which, as it had not purchased victory, exposed them to fearful carnage.
Dumouriez replaced Lafayette in supreme command. And on 20 September the allies received their first check at Valmy. The very day on which news reached Paris that it was saved and that Brunswick was in retreat, the National Convention met. Amid the wildest enthusiasm, it unanimously decreed "that royalty is abolished in France."
In the last sea-fight of Olaf there flames up within Carlyle's spirit, now in extreme age, the same glory and delight in war as in the days of his early manhood when he wrote Valmy and Jemappes. Since the heroic age there are no such battle-pictures as these.
"You drunk!" answered Commines jestingly. La Mothe had been on very dangerous ground and a change of subject was an unspeakable relief. "Why, except the King, no man in Valmy drinks less wine." "Wine-drunk? Am I a beast, Uncle, that you should say such a thing? No, not wine-drunk. Love-drunk, war-drunk, fighting-drunk.
If Valmy proclaimed the advent of militant democracy, the victory of Spaniards over one of the bravest of Napoleon's generals was felt to be an even greater portent. It ushered in the epoch of national resistance to the overweening claims of the Emperor of the West. That truth he seems dimly to have surmised. His rage on hearing of the capitulation was at first too deep for words.
Give me twenty minutes and you will say the Black Dog of Amboise is no cur." Nor was Jean Saxe's boast unjustified. La Mothe not only supped but ate, and with such satisfaction that in the peace of a healthy hunger crowned with as healthy a digestion unappreciated blessings of four-and-twenty he forgot alike King and Dauphin, Valmy and the Grey Gates of Amboise in the shadows across the road.
But, Stephen, if we act, if we return to Valmy and say, 'Sire, we have done our duty to the nation, with heavy hearts and in bitter sorrow we have done it: even though we have laid love itself on the altar of sacrifice, we have done it, give us this one life in return' can the King refuse? Remember, if it is not we it will be another, and if we have no claim to ask, there will be no life given.
Take these," and he pushed the coat of mail away from him impatiently, as if vexed that he had been betrayed into such a display of feeling. "Remember that I have never seen them, never, never. You promise me that? You swear that?" "I swear it, sire, solemnly." "And you will return to Valmy to me, in silence?" "I promise, sire." "Swear, boy, swear." "I swear it, solemnly." "There!"
"I wish the plot was as doubtful as the love; we might then have stayed comfortably in Valmy," answered Commines cynically, and La Mothe's eyes twinkled as he thought how much better he had read the King in his single hour than Commines had in all his ten years of intimacy.
He spoke to himself rather than to La Mothe, but after a little spell of silence he looked up, gravely in earnest. "You go too slowly. Any day the King may crook his finger. What if he calls you to Valmy, then sends you God knows where, God knows for how long, and you return to Amboise to find some one else has gathered your lily while you lagged?
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