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The next year the second coalition was formed, and the Directoire applied to the Belgian departments the new law of conscription. Up to that moment, with the exception of the rising avoided by Dumouriez, the Belgians had not attempted to rebel.
Grave replaced the dismissed and chagrined young minister, and Dumouriez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, took into his hands all the power and glory of the war movement. He developed and supplemented the plans which Narbonne had already formed, and, by the New Year, a vast army was assembled and the frontier divided into three great military districts.
Dumouriez remained, attempted to form an administration without the Girondin colleagues, but could not overcome the king's resistance to the act of banishment. On June 15 he resigned office, and took a command on the frontier.
But this very decree was the one which Dumouriez regarded as the most dangerous one for him to reject, as being that which the Assembly was most firmly resolved to make law; and, as his most vigorous remonstrances failed to shake the king's resolution on this point, he resigned his post as a minister, and repaired to the Flemish frontier to take the command of the army, which greatly needed an able leader.
After a full report of the negotiations with the house of Austria had been read by Dumouriez, the king added in a low but firm voice, "You have just heard the report which has been made to my council; these conclusions have been unanimously adopted, and I myself have taken the same resolution.
He had resolved on a trial by court-martial when he still believed Enghien to be an accomplice of Dumouriez; and when, late on Saturday, March 17th, that mistake was explained, his purpose remained unshaken unshaken too by the high mass of Easter Sunday, March 18th, which he heard in state at the Chapel of the Tuileries.
What Bouille could not do for an absolute, nor Lafayette for a constitutional throne, Dumouriez, at a less propitious time, hoped alone to carry through in the interest of a destroyed constitution and a monarchy without a party. Instead of remaining neutral among factions, as circumstances dictated to a general, and even to an ambitious man, Dumouriez preferred a rupture, in order to sway them.
The Austrians endeavoured with the same want of success, to cover Brussels and Maestricht: they were pursued and beaten by the army of Jourdan, which since its union had taken the name of the army of the Sambre et Meuse, and which did not leave them behind the Roer, as Dumouriez had done, but drove them beyond the Rhine.
I will further observe that, in thin campaign, Dumouriez foolishly abandoned the pursuit of the allies in order to transfer the theater from the center to the extreme left of the general field.
Thus far the conduct of the allies deserves praise: the desire of reconquering these rich provinces justified this enterprise, which, moreover, was judiciously directed against the extreme right of the long front of Dumouriez.
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