a way we had not ordered.  The General dismounts, steps into a cottage, a little from the wayside; will give them right order in writing.  Hark! what strange growling is heard:  what barkings are heard, loud yells of “Traitors,” of “Arrest:”  the National Battalions have wheeled round, are emitting shot!  Mount, Dumouriez, and spring for life!  Dumouriez and Staff strike the spurs in, deep; vault over ditches, into the fields, which prove to be morasses; sprawl and plunge for life; bewhistled with curses and lead.  Sunk to the middle, with or without horses, several servants killed, they escape out of shot-range, to General Mack the Austrian’s quarters.  Nay they return on the morrow, to Saint-Amand and faithful foreign Berchigny; but what boots it?  The Artillery has all revolted, is jingling off to Valenciennes:  all have revolted, are revolting; except only foreign Berchigny, to the extent of some poor fifteen hundred, none will follow Dumouriez against France and Indivisible Republic:  Dumouriez’s occupation’s gone. (Memoires, iv. 162-180.)

Such an instinct of Frenehhood and Sansculottism dwells in these men:  they will follow no Dumouriez nor Lafayette, nor any mortal on such errand.  Shriek may be of Sauve-qui-peut, but will also be of Vive-la-Republique.  New National Representatives arrive; new General Dampierre, soon killed in battle; new General Custine; the agitated Hosts draw back to some Camp of Famars; make head against Cobourg as they can.

And so Dumouriez is in the Austrian quarters; his drama ended, in this rather sorry manner.  A most shifty, wiry man; one of Heaven’s Swiss that wanted only work.  Fifty years of unnoticed toil and valour; one year of toil and valour, not unnoticed, but seen of all countries and centuries; then thirty other years again unnoticed, of Memoir-writing, English Pension, scheming and projecting to no purpose:  Adieu thou Swiss of Heaven, worthy to have been something else!

His Staff go different ways.  Brave young Egalite reaches Switzerland and the Genlis Cottage; with a strong crabstick in his hand, a strong heart in his body:  his Princedom in now reduced to that.  Egalite the Father sat playing whist, in his Palais Egalite, at Paris, on the 6th day of this same month of April, when a catchpole entered:  Citoyen Egalite is wanted at the Convention Committee! (See Montgaillard, iv. 144.) Examination, requiring Arrestment; finally requiring Imprisonment, transference to Marseilles and the Castle of If!  Orleansdom has sunk in the black waters; Palais Egalite, which was Palais Royal, is like to become Palais National.

Chapter 3.3.VII.

In Fight.

Our Republic, by paper Decree, may be ‘One and Indivisible;’ but what profits it while these things are?  Federalists in the Senate, renegadoes in the Army, traitors everywhere!  France, all in desperate recruitment since the Tenth of March, does not fly to the frontier, but only flies hither and thither.  This defection of contemptuous diplomatic Dumouriez falls heavy on the fine-spoken high-sniffing Hommes d’etat, whom he consorted with; forms a second epoch in their destinies.