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When he had arranged for their care, we set out to rejoin the King, and before going far, overtook his Majesty, who had stopped on the Chalons road, and was surrounded by a throng of fugitives, whom he was berating in German so energetic as to remind me forcibly of the "Dutch" swearing that I used to hear in my boyhood in Ohio.
Accordingly, the right wing of the allied army moved forward, in the grey of the morning of the 20th of September, to gain Kellerman's left flank and rear, and cut him off from retreat upon Chalons, while the rest of the army, moving from the heights of La Lune, which here converge semi-circularly round the plateau of Valmy, were to assail his position in front, and interpose between him and Dumouriez.
Every sunset leaves him to one more night of cruel dreams which morning shall deride! And while this can be said, what has Chalons, or any other spot on earth, that it should lure her into rest? The higher powers sometimes convey their messages and do their work after a prosaic fashion.
"How!" said a Fleming, Baldwin de Paperode; "our lives would be left us, but only after our goods had been pillaged and our limbs subjected to every torture!" "Sir Castellan," answered John of Chalons, "why speak you so? A choice must needs be made; for the king is determined to lose his crown rather than not be avenged."
Before leaving Troyes the next day, William Bellier, who had been Joan's host at Chinon, was left as bailiff of the place, along with other officers. Thence the army moved on by way of Châlons. Though still in the hands of the English, a deputation of clergy and citizens met the King, and placed themselves at his orders.
The camp of Chalons had been fired, it was said, by order of the Emperor, to keep the immense collection of stores there from falling into the hands of the Prussians, and for the last two days it had been going up in flame and smoke.
On the first news of his perfidy and ingratitude, that prince returned by rapid marches from the Rhine to the Saone, embarked on the last mentioned river at Chalons, and at Lyons trusting himself to the rapidity of the Rhone, arrived at the gates of Arles, with a military force which it was impossible for Maximian to resist, and which scarcely permitted him to take refuge in the neighboring city of Marseilles.
It was represented to the King that the Count of Chalons was not to be trusted, and that, instead of a holiday fight for mere show and in good humour, he secretly meant a real battle, in which the English should be defeated by superior force. The King, however, nothing afraid, went to the appointed place on the appointed day with a thousand followers.
The king's carriage rolled on the road to Châlons, and relays of eight horses were ordered at each post-house: this number of horses, the remarkable size and build of the berlin, the number of travellers who occupied the interior, the three body guards, whose livery formed a strange contrast to their physiognomy and martial appearance, the Bourbonian features of Louis XVI. seated in a corner of the carriage, and which was totally out of character with the rôle of valet de chambre the king had taken on himself, all these circumstances were calculated to excite distrust and suspicion, and to compromise the safety of the royal family. But their passport removed all objections, it was perfectly formal, and in these terms: "De par le roi. Mandons de laisser passer Madame la baronne de Korf, se rendant
We may recollect it was through a dispatch from Napoleon to the Empress Maria Louisa, intercepted near Châlons by the Cossacks, that the allies were informed of the plan he had formed of falling upon their communications with his whole disposable force, basing his operations upon the fortified towns of Lorraine and Alsace.
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