miserable spectacle, reduced from eighty thousand, who had entered France three months before, confident of victory and fame, to fifty thousand humbled and emaciated men. If Dumouriez had had that unity and subordination amongst his generals which he had not, he would have been able, by a forced march, to outstrip the allies, cut them off from the Rhine, and scarcely a thousand of them would probably have escaped. The blame thrown upon him for not thus inflicting a terrible chastisement, appears unmerited, after the causes of weakness which we have seen in his army. It was probably to remedy this, as much as for the indulgence of a vanity peculiarly French, that Dumouriez set out for Paris, after the retreat of the allies. He was contemplating an immediate campaign against the Austrians in Flanders, and it was absolutely necessary that he should have his authority as commander-in-chief confirmed by the ministry and assembly; it was equally necessary that he should be promptly supported by these authorities in his military proceedings; and he knew very well that he had left almost every party and person offended with him, for one cause or another. He had offended the ministers and the Girondists, by turning out the very Gironde ministers who were now in again; he had deeply incensed the jacobins, by showing some favour to the royal family; and there was hardly a leader in the great parties whom he had not offended by his plain speaking, and by setting at defiance their injunctions. It was necessary, in the moment of success, to endeavour to heal all these wounds. He arrived in Paris on the 11th of October, and was well received by the ministers, Servan, Roland, and their colleagues, who appeared willing to forget the past; he was equally well received by the convention, which he flattered by presenting to it a standard taken from the emigrants; he was surrounded by applauding members, and, too politic to make complaints in his speech detailing the glories of the defeat of the Prussians, he even praised Kellermann. The jacobins were prepared to frown on him for his reception by the ministers and the convention; but he hastened to present himself at their club, where he was received by Danton, Collot d'Herbois, Chabot, Fabre d'Eglantine, and others, with open arms. Danton presided, and the cordiality with which he welcomed the successful general communicated itself to the whole club. Collot d'Herbois, the ex-player, made a speech, in thorough theatric style, and in reply to Dumouriez's speech, in which he said, before the month was out, he would march with sixty thousand men to attack kings, and save the people from tyranny; he told him that he was not a general made by a king, but by the people, and that he must destroy kings and raise peoples. He compared him to Themistocles; warned him of probable ingratitude, such as Themistocles suffered; but that it was a glorious mission, and that he must ever remember Themistocles. He reminded him that he had let off the king of Prussia too easily, but that he must doubly punish the emperor of Austria, and he finished by exclaiming, "At Brussels, liberty will spring up under thy feet! citizens, maidens, children will throng around them. Oh! what happiness art thou about to enjoy, Dumouriez! My wife is from Brussels; she, too, will embrace thee!" Danton, who had blackened his reputation with all honourable men by his share in the murders of September, paraded Dumouriez through Paris as a hero almost equal to himself. The general left no stone unturned to win favour. He visited the circles of the Girondists, though he felt that madame Roland and her admirers had no confidence in him. He visited the society of artists, who were, almost to a man, jacobins, and they gave him a great entertainment. All went well, and Dumouriez was about to return to the army in high spirits, when a strange apparition presented itself in the midst of this very fête of the artists. It was Marat, in his usual filthy attire, and equally filthy person. He was attended by two jacobin members of the convention, Bentabolle and Monteau. Marat, with a never-ceasing malice and envy, had successively attacked every one who had risen in popular favour-Mirabeau, Bailly, La Fayette. Petion, the Girondists. His soul was now blackened with envy at Dumouriez's success and applauses. When he reached the house of mademoiselle Candeille, a celebrated woman of that day, where the entertainment was given, he found a great array of carriages drawn up, which inflamed his spleen, and Santerre, with a detachment of national guards, protecting the festivities. He pushed his way through, and asked for Dumouriez. At his appearance there was a general sensation, and a number of persons quitted the place in all haste. Marat made his way up to Dumouriez, and loudly accused him of having punished two battalions of volunteers, the Mauconseils and the republicans, for having murdered four Prussian deserters in cold blood. Marat declared the volunteers good patriots, and the so-called Prussians to be emigrants. Dumouriez, eyeing the monster with contempt, said, "Aha! so you are the man they call Marat!" He passed a disdainful glance over him from head to foot, turned his back on him, and left him. Marat, in his account of the interview, states that Dumouriez said more than this, referring him to the convention for any information on the subject; but he confesses that he then turned his back upon him—an insult only to be washed out of the soul of Marat with blood. Dumouriez, however, paid more respect to the other two deputies. After four days, Dumouriez quitted Paris, and returned to the army. His visit had in part succeeded, in part failed. His reconciliation with the jacobins and the Girondists was, after all, but hollow. Neither party had confidence in him as devoted to their interests, but he had obtained from the executive council an approval of his plans for the military operations. He himself was to drive the Austrians from the Netherlands, and secure Belgium as an addition to France. This was openly avowed, notwithstanding the repeated assurances of the national assembly that France renounced all ideas of conquest. Montesquieu was to maintain his position along the Alps; and here again, in direct violation of all the protestations of the revolutionary government, he was to secure Nice and Savoy as additions to France. Biron was to be reinforced, in order to guard the Rhine from Basle to Landau. Kellermann was to do what Dumouriez in vain had before commanded him-march rapidly betwixt Luxembourg and Treves, hasten to Coblentz, and, if possible, yet intercept the retreat of the Prussians. Custine and Meusnier were to support these operations, and make an A.D. 1792.1 THE FRENCH OVERRUN THE NETHERLANDS. active invasion of Germany. Such were the settled plans of aggression adopted by the conquest-renouncing republicans-the apostles of liberty to all nations! Dumouriez obtained more than this: that the great body of volunteers who were to join the camp at Paris should all be sent to swell his army for the invasion of Flanders; besides which, that his troops, who were destitute of almost everything, should receive shoes and greatcoats, and that six thousand million of francs should be sent for their pay. Thus reinforced, Dumouriez arrived at Valenciennes on the 27th of October, and prepared to follow the Austrian commander, Saxe-Teschen, who had been in vain bombarding Lille. On the 5th of November, being still further reinforced by another body of troops under D'Harville, he overtook Saxe-Teschen at Jemappe. The Austrians were strongly posted, but were only about fifteen thousand men opposed to the sixty thousand French; yet they made a vigorous resistance. The battle raged from early in the morning till two o'clock at noon, when the Austrians gave way. They retired, however, in good order; and Dumouriez, who had led his forces into the field singing the Marseillais hymn, did not again make much pursuit. This time, he alleged as the cause, that the French army, in taking possession of the Austrian camp at Jemappe, were seized with a fear that the hil was undermined, and that they would all be blown into the air. They fled out of it; and besides this, he said, the generals again showed insubordination, and would not give chase. Upwards of two thousand men are said to have fallen on each side. The battle opened all Flanders to the French; Tournay opened its gates to Labourdonnaye, and Courtrai, Menin, and Bruges sent deputies to meet and welcome Damouriez. Other towns rapidly followed their example. The country had been already jacobinised, and now fancied it was going to enjoy liberty and equality in alliance with the French. The people were soon undeceived. The French had no intention of anything but, under those pretences, of subduing and preying on the surrounding nations. Flanders had speedy proofs of what every country where the French came had to expect. Jacobin commissioners arrived from the convention to levy contributions for the maintenance of the army, as if they were a conquered people. Dumouriez sued an order, on entering Mons, for the clergy to advance one year's income for the same purpose. Saxe-Teschen and old marshal Bender evacuated Brussels, and on the 14th Damouriez entered and took up his head-quarters there. He there made heavy forced loans, and soon after arrived what was styled "a committee of purchases" from Paris, Headed by Bidermann, the banker, and partner of Clavières, minister of finance. This committee, on which were several Jews, made all the bargains for the army, and paid for them-not in gold, but in the worthless assignats of France. The Belgians remonstrated and resisted, but in vain. The coldiers were paid in hard cash; but speculators, who warmed in the track of the army, gave them three times their amount in assignats; and they exacted, under threats, and often under blows, the full nominal value of these assignats from the tradesmen. Besides this monstrous oppression, under plea of seizing the effects of French emigrants, citizens were plundered of money, jewels, pictures, and valuable furniture; and wagons 35 were soon seen, loaded with works of art and vertû, on their way to Paris-a system which became universal in the French campaigns all over Europe. To make the matter worse, the jacobinised sans culottes of Belgium were let loose against what were called the aristocrats-the people of property, and they were thus doubly plundered. In vain did the astonished sufferers appeal to Dumouriez for redress; he declared that he had no power in such matters, they must appeal to the convention; but the convention paid no attention to such complaints; and a still greater number of adventurers, ruined by the revolution at home, or afraid of their lives there, flocked after the French armies, and pursued a lucrative trade in the robbery and extortion of the unfortunate peoples who received a visit from the Gallic armies of freedom and fraternity. Dumouriez advanced to Mechlin, having dispatched Labourdonnaye to lay siege to Antwerp and Valence, and to reduce Namur. At Mechlin he found a great store of arms and ammunition, which enabled him to equip whole flocks of volunteers who came after him from France. On the 22nd he again overtook Saxe-Teschen at Tirlemont, where he made another stout resistance, and then retired to Liege, where the Austrians made another stand on the 27th. They were repulsed, but with heavy loss on both sides; and soon after, Antwerp and Valence having surrendered, all the Austrian Netherlands, except Luxembourg, were in the hands of France within a single month. The jacobins of Liege outdid those of other towns in their violence against the so-called aristocrats, and the French plundered all alike. Danton and Lacroix arrived as commissioners from the convention, and levied heavy contributions in its name, plundered the churches and the municipalities, and sent away loads of valuable pictures, carvings, plate, and rich furniture. They stirred up the sans culottes to imitate the Parisians in massacreing the wealthy citizens. Instead of relief and liberty, the Belgians found their country converted into a hell upon earth by their French friends. Dumouriez sent forward Miranda, a Peruvian, who had superseded Labourdonnaye at Antwerp, to reduce Ruremonde, and to enter Holland by the seizure of Maestricht; but the convention were not yet prepared for this invasion of Holland, and Dumouriez pushed on to Aix-la-Chapelle, where he again defeated the Austrians on the 7th of December, and, levying heavy contributions there, took up his winter quarters in the ancient city of Charlemagne, and within little more than a day's march of the Rhine. Whilst Dumouriez had thus overrun the Netherlands, other French generals had been equally pushing on aggressions. Custine, with about twenty thousand men, had marched upon the German towns on the Rhine; had taken Speir, Worms, and Mayence by the 21st of October. These towns abounded with democrats, who had imbibed the grand doctrine of the "rights of man," and laboured, to their cost, under the same delusion as the Belgians-that the French were coming solely for their liberation and advantage. Custine advanced to Frankfort-on-the-Maine, which he plundered without mercy. Custine called loudly for co-operation from Kellermann; but Kellermann not complying, he was superseded by Beurnonville, who was ordered to take Treves. He attempted it, but too late in the season, and failed. Custine, who had advanced too far from the main army to support his position, still, however, garrisoned Frankfort with two thousand men, and took up his own quarters at Ober Yssel and Hainburg, a little below Frankfort, in the commencement of December. there were a considerable number of the members of the first assembly who now reappeared, as Marat, Robespierre, abbé Sieyes, &c. Thomas Paine appeared for the department of the Pas de Calais, and Dr. Priestley was elected for the department of L'Orme, but did not sit. The Girondists now appeared on the right, the jacobins on the left, under the name of the Mountain, and the centre, or moderates, took the name of the Plain. The first speech and motion were made by Manuel, proposing that the president of the convention and of France should be lodged in the Tuileries, attended by all the state which had accompanied the king, and that, whenever he appeared in the house, all the members should receive him standing. This was an astounding proposition, and would have converted his friend Petion, who was elected president, into a monarch for the time. The motion was received with a storm of reprobation, and dismissed. The second motion, made by Collot d'Herbois, was for the immediate abolition of royalty. He was seconded by the abbé Gregoire, and it was unani. mously abolished accordingly. No time was lost in com This was a broad indication of the French seizing, under the pretence of propagating liberty, on what had been called the natural boundaries of France in the time of Louis XIV. -namely, the Rhine and the Alps, thus including Belgium, part of Holland, Nice, and Savoy. They dispatched emissaries to Victor Amadeus, the king of Sardinia, offering to do what Napoleon III., too, also once offered to do, to drive the Austrians out of Italy, and give Italy to the Italians. As they had, however, previously sent numbers of their jacobin propagandists to inoculate his people with republicanism, the king refused their offers, and forbade general Semonville to enter the country. On this, the convention proclaimed war against him, and ordered Montesquieu to invade Nice and Savoy. With an army of fifteen thousand men and twenty pieces of artillery, Montesquieu entered Savoy, and the few Savoyard troops being unable to communicating this fact to the royal family in the Temple. At pete with him, the people, moreover, being already prepared by French republicans, he overrun the country, entered Chambery in triumph, and occupied the province to the foot of Mont Cenis. Another army, under Anselve, entered Nice, occupied Nice and Villafranca with little resistance. Arms and ammunition fell into their hands in abundance. To complete their operations, admiral Truguet appeared on the sea-board with a fleet of eleven ships of the line, and other vessels, carrying two thousand land troops. He assisted in the reduction of Mont Albano, and, finding some resistance on the part of the inhabitants of the small port of Oneglia, he bombarded the town and massacred the people. Truguet then proceeded to Genoa, and afterwards to Naples, where he compelled the weak Bourbon king, by a cannonade, to recognise the republic. He then hastened to Toulon, being apprehensive of being intercepted in these bravadoes, contrary to all the laws of nations at nominal peace with each other, by a British fleet. Elated by the successes of these campaigns, the French convention passed a decree, declaring that it would grant succour and fraternity to all peoples desirous of recovering their liberty; it ordered all its generals to give such aid to all citizens who were, or might be, harshly treated on account of their desire for liberty; and that the generals should post this decree in all public places to which they should carry the arms of the republic. On the 21st of September the convention met in the Tuileries. Amongst the members for Paris were Robespierre, Marat, Danton, Desmoulins, a younger brother of Robespierre, Augustine, Collot d'Herbois, David, Fabre d'Eglantine, Manuel, Panis, Sergent, and nearly all the leading jacobins. In fact, the jacobins of both town and country were returned almost to a man, and most of the Girondists. The first act of the convention was to send to the legislative assembly the notification of its formation, and that the existence of that body was, as a matter of course, at an end. They then marched in a body to the Salle de Manege, and took possession of it. It was, in the case of most of the members, but returning to their old seats. But four o'clock, on the very first day of the convention's existence, namely, on the 21st of September, Lubin, a municipal officer, attended by a body of horsemen and a great mob, sounded a trumpet, and cried, in a voice that the royal family could hear distinctly, that monarchy was abolished by decree of the convention. Clery, the faithful valet-de-chambre, says, "Hebert, so well known by the name of Père du Chesne, and Destournelles, were then on guard over the family; they were sitting, at the time, near the door, and stared the king in the face with a malicious grin. The monarch perceived it, but, having a book in his hand, continued to read without suffering the smallest alteration to appear upon his countenance. The queen displayed equal resolution; not a word nor a gesture escaped either of them to increase the malignant enjoyment of these men." Clery went to the window as the proclamation ceased; and, as he was taken for the king, both soldiers and mob made the most menacing gestures, and heaped on him the foulest terms of abuse. No sooner had the united convention performed this notable act of abolishing royalty, than they fell upon each other, Girondist against jacobin, and jacobin against Girondist. Manuel and Petion, who had incurred the odium of proposing to invest the president with the attributes of royalty, passed for Girondists, though they had, for a long time, been acting wholly with the jacobins; it was again a Girondist, Buzot, who proposed that the convention should have a guard. To this the jacobins replied that the love of the people made a guard unnecessary. On this the Giroudists imprudently threw down the gauntlet to the jacobins, and declared that the Mountain was meditating designs against the republic; that they were aiming at a dictatorship or a triumvirate, and that the massacres of September were but a preparation for it. The jacobins dared them to the proof, and Rebecqui, a new member, rose and denounced Robespierre. Others threw out the suspicion that Danton, Robespierre, and Marat were aiming at making themselves a triumvirate. Danton rose and denied it, and was followed by Robespærre, in a long, tedious harangue, defying the to the constant presence of low jacobin guards, who never lost sight of them, except during the night, when one of the guards placed his bed before the door, to prevent the possibility of any entrance or egress. The king occupied one floor, the queen and princesses, with the dauphin, another. Louis and his wife were prevented having the slightest opportunity of exchanging an idea. A single attendant only was allowed them-the faithful Clery, and a man to Girondists. Barbaroux reiterated the charges against Robespierre; and, after a violent debate by other members, Marat rose, for the first time, to defend himself. At the hideous and dirty aspect of this notorious cut-throat of all decent character, of this bloodthirsty assassin of truth and reputation, there was a general burst of horror and indignation. But Marat threw his dirty cap on the tribune, and, with a fiend-like grin, said, "I perceive that I have many enemies in this assembly." He was over-assist him in waiting at table, for Clery waited and attended whelmed with shouts of "Down! down!" but he set them at defiance; declared that all those who had persecuted him were cowards, and that he was the only man who had openly proposed a dictator. If he had been listened to, he said, on the day when the Bastille was taken, the heads of five hundred conspirators would have fallen from their shoulders, and it would have saved them the trouble they had had to purge the city in September. After a still more violent debate, in which Vergniaud attacked Marat, and that unabashed monster replied in a strain of self-glorification, the convention passed to the order of the day, thus leaving the victory with the jacobins. The war of parties was renewed from day to day. Louvet, the Girondist, made a vehement attack on Robespierre; whilst Roland, the minister, as briskly attacked the proceedings of the commune, which was composed of the leading jacobins. He charged them with corrupt practices, and waste of the public money; and he sent orders into the departments to arrest their commissaries, as robbers and assassins. Men were employed to call out for the heads of Robespierre, Danton, and Marat. These were acts not likely to pass unavenged by the jacobins, who had the whole sanguinary mob at their beck. On the 5th of November Robespierre rose to defend himself. He asked, in a tone of irony, where were his means of making himself a dictator? had he treasures? had he armies? had he fortresses? &c.; but he omitted to ask whether he had the truculent populace at his command, which every one knew that he had. The Mountain again called for the order of the day, and carried it, as well as that Robespierre's speech should be printed and circulated through the departments. When this sanguinary sophist, this incorruptible one, appeared in the jacobin club that evening, he was almost smothered with embraces, and deafened with applauses. The club, too, ordered his speech to be printed, and circulated throughout all France; Robespierre, and the other jacobins, circulated it, too, in their journals, so that the country was deluged with it. It was manifest that the Girondists had suffered a complete defeat through the whole controversy, and must expect the vengeance of the most relentless party that ever existed. They still appeared in a majority on all questions of a general kind, and figured largely in the committee for revising the constitution, and in that of the twenty-four, for arranging the arraignment of the king. That question only, the king's trial-and certain condemnation, stood between them and the exterminating fury of the jacobins. The unfortunate royal family remained cooped up in the Temple during these transactions. They had been removed from the small tower to the large one, simply because it was deemed more secure. This removal added nothing to the comfort of the unfortunate captives, for they were subjected on the whole family in turn. They breakfasted at nine o'clock in the king's apartment, and then adjourned to that of the queen. There, Louis turned schoolmaster, and instructed his son, teaching him passages from Corneille and Racine by heart, and giving him lessons in geography, of which he himself was very fond. The queen performed the same offices for her daughter, and then she and her sister-in-law worked tapestry. At one o'clock they were all allowed to walk for an hour in the Temple, where they were affectionately observed by a number of their loyal subjects, who placed themselves at windows overlooking the garden. But even this indulgence was embittered to them. They frequently found written on the walls, in large letters, sentences full of the indecent expressions of the hatred of their enemies. The obscenity of some of these scrawls was infamous, and so large, as to make it impossible to overlook them. One of the soldiers wrote on the king's own chamber door, "The guillotine is permanent, and ready for the tyrant Louis!" At another time was chalked up, " Madame Veto shall swing! The little wolves must be strangled!" &c. One Simon, a shoemaker, and one of the commissioners appointed to superintend the expenses of the Temple, was extremely insolent to the captives, and would observe to Clery in their hearing, "Clery, ask Capet if he wants anything, that I may not have the trouble of coming up twice." One of the door-keepers, named Rocher, accoutred as a pioneer, with long whiskers, a black hairy cap, a huge sabre, and a belt, from which hung a bunch of great keys, came up to the door when the king wanted to go out, but did not open it till his majesty was quite close, when, pretending to search for the key among the many which he had, and which he rattled in a terrible manner, he designedly kept the royal family waiting, and then drew the bolts with a great clatter. After doing this, he ran down before them, and, fixing himself on one side of the last door, with a long pipe in his mouth, puffed the fumes of his tobacco at each of the royal family as they went out, and chiefly at the queen and princesses. Some national guards, who were amused at these indignities, came about him, burst into fits of laughter at every puff of smoke, and used the grossest language. Some of them went so far as to bring chairs from the guardroom, to sit and enjoy the sight, obstructing the passage, which of itself was sufficiently narrow. Such were the indignities daily heaped on this unhappy family by the lowest vulgarity. At two o'clock dinner was served; the king took his nap, and the ladies returned to their needlework, and Clery, in another room, amused the dauphin with some kind of sport. In the evening the family read some book together, and then retired to their respective apartments. The king continued to read some hours in the Latin and Italian classics, Thomas à Kempis's "Imitation |