land took the same course. Largely aided by French fleets and troops the Americans vigorously maintained the war against the armies which England, in spite of her European foes, continued to send across the Atlantic. But the struggle was too unequal to be maintained by this country for many years; and when the treaties of 1783 restored peace to the world, the independence of the United States was reluctantly recognised by their ancient parent and recent enemy, England. SYNOPSIS OF EVENTS BETWEEN THE DEFEAT OF BURGOYNE AT SARATOGA 1777, AND THE BATTLE OF VALMY 1792. 1781. Surrender of Lord Cornwallis and the British army to Washington. 1782. Rodney's victory over the Spanish fleet. Unsuccessful siege of Gibraltar by the Spaniards and French. 1783. End of the American war. 1788. The States-General are convened in France; beginning of the Revolution. CHAPTER XIV. THE BATTLE OF VALMY. Purpurei metuunt tyranni Stantem columnam; neu populus frequens Ad arma cessantes ad arma Concitet, imperiumque frangat. HORAT. Od. 1. 35. A little fire is quickly trodden out, Which, being suffered, rivers cannot quench. SHAKSPEARE. A FEW miles distant from the little town of St. Menehould, in the north-east of France, are the village and hill of Valmy; and near the crest of that hill a simple monument points out the burialplace of the heart of a general of the French republic, and a marshal of the French empire. The elder Kellerman (father of the distinguished officer of that name, whose cavalry charge decided the battle of Marengo), held high commands in the French armies throughout the wars of the Convention, the Directory, the Consulate, and the Empire. He survived those wars, and the empire itself, dying in extreme old age in 1820. The last wish of the veteran on his death-bed was that his heart should be deposited in the battle-field of Valmy, there to repose among the remains of his old companions-in-arms, who had fallen at his side on that spot twenty-eight years before, on the memorable day when they won the primal victory of Revolutionary France, and prevented the armies of Brunswick and the emigrant bands of Condé from marching on defenceless Paris, and destroying the immature democracy in its cradle. The Duke of Valmy (for Kellerman, when made one of Napoleon's military peers in 1802, took his title from this same battle-field) had participated, during his long and active career, in the gaining of many a victory far more immediately dazzling than the one, the remembrance of which he thus cherished. He had been present at many a scene of carnage, where blood flowed in deluges, compared with which, the libations of slaughter poured out at Valmy would have seemed scant and insignificant. But he rightly estimated the paramount importance of the battle with which he thus wished his appellation while living, and his memory after his death, to be identified. The successful resistance, which the raw Carmagnole levies, and the disorganized relics of the old monarchy's army then opposed to the combined hosts and chosen leaders of Prussia, Austria, and the French refugee noblesse, determined at once and for ever the belligerent character of the Revolution. The raw artisans and tradesmen, the clumsy burghers, the base mechanics and low peasant-churls, as it had been the fashion to term the middle and lower classes in France, found that they could face cannon-balls, pull triggers, and cross bayonets, without having been drilled into military machines, and without being officered by scions of noble houses. They awoke to the consciousness of their own instinctive soldiership. They at once acquired confidence in themselves and in each other; and that confidence soon grew into a spirit of unbounded audacity and ambition. "From the cannonade of Valmy may be dated the commencement of that career of victory which carried their armies to Vienna and the Kremlin."* One of the gravest reflexions that arises from the contemplation of the civil restlessness and military enthusiasm, which the close of the last century saw nationalized in France, is the consideration that these disturbing influences have become perpetual. No settled system of government, that shall endure from generation to generation, that shall be proof against corruption and popular violence, seems capable of taking root among the * Alison. French. And every revolutionary movement in Paris thrills throughout the rest of the world. Even the successes which the powers allied against France gained in 1814 and 1815, important as they were, could not annul the effects of the preceding twenty-three years of general convulsion and war. In 1830, the dynasty which foreign bayonets had imposed on France was shaken off; and men trembled at the expected outbreak of French anarchy and the dreaded inroads of French ambition. They "looked forward with harassing anxiety to a period of destruction similar to that which the Roman world experienced about the middle of the third century of our era.' Louis Philippe cajoled Revolution, and then strove with seeming success to stifle it. But, in spite of Fieschi laws, in spite of the dazzle of Algerian razzias and Pyrenee-effacing marriages, in spite of hundreds of armed forts, and hundreds of thousands of coercing troops, Revolution lived, and struggled to get free. The old Titan spirit heaved restlessly beneath "the monarchy based on Republican institutions." At last, three years ago, the whole fabric of kingcraft was at once rent and scattered to the winds, by the uprising of the Parisian democracy; and *See Niebuhr's Preface to the second volume of the History of Rome, written in October, 1830. |