Chapter 8 Scaramouche The Kingmaker by Rafael Sabatini
VALMY
The army of twenty-five thousand émigrés grew impatient with the dwindling of restricted resources, the greater part of which had been laid out on handsome uniforms, fine horses and other equipment to render them dazzling on parade. The Princes had taken their place at the head of these glittering troops, a matter of considerable distress to Monsieur, who, of sedentary habits, detested all form of physical exertion. Destiny, however, had cast him for a definite part, and that part he must play, however much Nature, indifferent to Destiny's requirements, might have denied him the necessary endowments.
In the rear of this fine host came the long train of lumbering army wagons and among these two great wooden structures on wheels which contained the Princes' mint; the printing press for the manufacture of the false assignats which already were flooding and distressing Europe. Monsieur solemnly promised that the King of France would honour this paper currency. He had also promised that it should not be put into circulation until France was reached. But this promise had not been kept; and by his foreign hosts and allies Monsieur was at last to be constrained to abandon this facile method of supplementing the dwindling millions he had borrowed.
Side by side with the émigrés marched the Prussian and Austrian armies. The émigrés fondly believed that these legions marched solely to liberate the King, to purge France of anarchy and restore her to her rightful owners; marched, in fact—in that phrase which had been coined in Coblentz—to the deliverance of Throne and Altar. Fatuous assumptions, these, of men who believed themselves to be the elect of Europe, in whose service humanity was ready altruistically to immolate her children. They had not heard the Austrian Emperor's epigram when invoked to rescue Marie Antoinette: "It is true that I have a sister in France; but France is not my sister." Austria had produced too many archduchesses to be deeply perturbed about the fate of one of them, even though this one should have become Queen of France. What really interested Austria was that Lorraine had once belonged to her Princes and might now be re-possessed, just as Prussia was intent upon the annexation of Franche-Comté. Here was an excellent opportunity for both to readjust the accounts which had been disturbed by that megalomaniac Louis XIV when he ravaged the Palatinate.
Of this, however, nothing was yet said, and there was as yet no suspicion in émigré breasts that the aims of their allies were not identical with their own. But there were signs. The King of Prussia doomed the Princes to nullity in the command. They and their followers were to be observers rather than auxiliaries. One of the things they observed was that in a measure as the armies advanced, the Austrians planted their black-and-yellow frontier posts surmounted by the double-headed Austrian eagle.
Longwy was taken, and the Prussians thrust upon Verdun, devouring the contents of every village on their way and then setting them on fire, in fulfilment of the threat in the Duke of Brunswick's manifesto against all those who ventured to resist the invasion.
The Princes had assured their allies that once they were upon French soil, the French masses, emancipated by their presence from the fear of the revolutionaries, would make haste to range themselves on the side of Throne and Altar.
If the inclination existed at all the conduct of the Prussians did not foster it.
On the 30th August they were before Verdun, which they occupied after a short bombardment, and the road to Paris lay now open before them.
News of this reaching Paris two days later produced the September massacres.
La Fayette was gone. He perceived that constitutionalism was ended, that an attainder of treason awaited him, and that nothing remained for him but to depart. He crossed the frontier, intending by way of Holland to reach the United States. But he fell into enemy hands, and against all the usages of nations was to suffer years of miserable imprisonment.
Dumouriez was sent to replace him, and to oppose to the steady, magnificent troops of Austria and Prussia, to the fine flower of French chivalry and three hundred guns, a ragged host barely twenty-five thousand strong, ill-armed, untrained and undisciplined, supported by forty pieces of ordnance.
That futile inter-cannonade ensued which is magniloquently known as the Battle of Valmy, in which there were three hundred French, and less than two hundred allied casualties. A mysterious affair which profoundly puzzled Bonaparte later. Incomprehensibly it marked the end of the invasion. The Prussians who had depended upon living on the country were almost entirely without food, they were knee-deep in mud, and ravaged by dysentery attributed to the chalky water. The rain continued to distress them. The horizon was black.
Brunswick advised retreat. The King of Prussia as well as the émigrés, who were now desperate, opposed him. They wanted to risk a battle with the object of seizing Chalons. But Brunswick objected that they would be setting too much upon the board in such a gamble. He argued that a defeat would mean the loss of the entire army, and that upon the army depended the fate of the Prussian monarchy.
His Majesty was persuaded, and on the thirtieth of September began the dreadful retreat of that great host, attended by rain, mud, famine, and dysentery.
To the émigrés, as you may read in the memoirs which some of them have left, this abrupt eclipse of their confident hopes, almost without a real battle having been fought, represented the end of the world and was a thing inexplicable. Unanimously, almost, in these mémoirs they declare themselves bought and sold, betrayed by their allies, or else that Brunswick was a Freemason and the march on Paris had been forbidden him by the lodges. The first part of the accusation may be true. For it is a fact that on his return to Germany the debt-ridden Duke of Brunswick paid out eight millions to his creditors. If Bonaparte had known this the victory of Valmy might have been less of a mystery to him.
The exhausted army struggled back through lands that avenged the ravages they had suffered. They could offer now no sustenance to the starving ravagers. Men and horses dropped exhausted in their tracks and lay to die where they fell or to be massacred by the peasants who constantly harassed them, thirsting to repay the destroyers of their homesteads. And for the émigrés, as they toiled fainting through the white glutinous mud of Champagne, the peasants were not the only enemies to be feared. The very Prussians, starving like themselves, turned upon them to pillage their baggage, destroying, as is the way of pillagers, what they could not carry off. And there were women and children with the émigrés, families which had followed the army in carriages, so confident that they were going home. Now these delicate ladies cumbered the retreat of that routed host, shared the hardships and suffered indignities unspeakable which did not end even at the Rhine. For having crossed it, they now found themselves contemptuously in prey to the rapacity of the Germans, who took every advantage of their misfortune to strip them by fraud if not by violence of what little they might yet possess.
The dreadful news was borne by the first stragglers to Coblentz at about the same time as the news that in Paris the King had been deposed, the monarchy abolished and the Republic proclaimed by the National Convention at the first of its deliberations.
Louis XVI had been removed to the Temple a prisoner; and there were even rumours that he was to be brought to trial, attainted of treason in that he had invited foreigners in arms to invade France.
This news brought dismay to a little house on the Grünplatz, which Madame de Plougastel had rented upon the departure of the Princes, and where her cousin Kercadiou, his niece and André-Louis were lodged with her. It put an end to the term of happiness which had reigned there for the last five weeks. The Princes, they presently heard, were at Namur and the Comte de Plougastel was with them.
For Madame de Plougastel, the immediate outlook was not too disconcerting. She was supplied if not with money at least with the valuable jewels she had brought away with her, and these should provide for many a day. But the Lord of Gavrillac was at the end of his resources, and compelled at last, for the first time in his life to bend his mind to the sordid details of provision for his existence.
It was for André-Louis to come to the rescue. In the prosperous days of his fencing academy in Paris, seeking an investment for his considerable savings, he had purchased a farm in Saxony. This land he now proposed to re-convert into gold so as to provide for their needs.
With twenty Louis borrowed from Madame de Plougastel, the half of the sum she pressed upon him, he set out for Dresden to negotiate the sale. All that we know of his activities there during the next four months is contained in two letters that survive out of several which appear to have passed between him and those he had left behind in Coblentz. The first of these is written from Dresden at the end of December.
Monsieur my Godfather, An offer at last for these lands of mine at Heimthal has been made of six thousand crowns, which is to say thirty thousand limes. I paid, as I think you know, over two thousand louis for them two years ago, and the purchase was represented to me as a bargain at the time, and rightly so, as far as I am able to judge from an inspection of the property. The offer comes from the present Saxon tenant, who is imbued with the rascally acquisitive instincts commonly, but not on that account correctly, attributed to Hebrews. I say this the more feelingly since my mentor in these matters is a Jew named Ephraim, but for whose honesty I should long since have found myself in difficulties. Acting as my banker here, he has regularly collected rents and paid dues, and in consequence I find some six hundred crowns at my disposal, no inconsiderable sum in such times as these. It enables me, my dear godfather, to send you a draft on Stoffel of Coblentz for two hundred crowns, which will provide for your immediate necessities and those of my dear Aline.
My good Ephraim points out to me that my tenant, actuated by the universal spirit in Germany at present towards French Émigrés, hopes to trade upon my necessity and obtain the farm; or one half of its value. He advises that sooner than submit to be robbed I should rid myself of this tenant, and until some honest Purchaser presents himself, I should farm the land myself. There is certainly a living in it, if a modest one. But my inclinations are hardly agrarian. Considering that the state of things in France becomes steadily worse and encourages little hope of an early return to Gavrillac, which by now, moreover, will have suffered confiscation, it is necessary to do something to keep ourselves afloat. I revert to my erstwhile notion of turning to account my knowledge of the sword. I have talked of it with Ephraim and on the security of the Heimthal property he will advance me the funds necessary to open and equip here in Dresden an academy of arms, which I do not doubt my capacity of rendering as prosperous as my old school in the Rue du Hasard.
This is a pleasant town, with an agreeable society, in which once it were perceived that you are independent, you would find a cordial reception. I beg you, my dear godfather, to give it thought and write to me. If you decide to join me I shall at once set about carrying my project into effect, and at the same time discover a suitable lodging for us all. It is not Peru that I offer you; but at least it is modest comfort and tranquillity. I add a little letter for Aline.
He also adds inquiries on their health and recommends himself to the remembrance of Madame de Plougastel.
The other surviving letter, from which we are similarly enabled to gather the march of events, is from the Lord of Gavrillac. It is dated from Hamm in Westphalia, on the fourth of the following February.
My dear Godson,
I write within a few hours of our arrival here to let you know that we are now at Hamm, where Monseigneur the Comte de Provence and Monseigneur the Comte d'Artois, by the hospitality of the King of Prussia, have established themselves. Monsieur de Plougastel is in their very restricted train, and has desired Madame de Plougastel to join him here. Monsieur, learning that Madame de Plougastel and I were together at Coblentz, was very graciously moved, no doubt from his affection for my late brother, since I have done nothing to deserve it for myself, to offer me also the hospitality of his very diminutive court. And so we have all come here together, and we are lodged at the Bear, a house kept by kindly folk, and not expensive. The plight of the Princes is pitiful in the extreme, and their quarters in Hamm are utterly unworthy of persons of their exalted rank.
The hospitality of his Majesty the King of Prussia scarcely goes beyond permission to reside here. Hope of redemption seems to diminish daily. Yet the courage and fortitude of these Princes in adversity is beyond belief, as it is beyond praise even in this black hour when news comes from Paris of the horrible, incredible, sacrilegious crime of the canaille in putting the King to death. Monsieur has issued a declaration in which he assumes the regency, proclaims the Dauphin King of France, and nobly announces his sole ambition to be to avenge the blood of his brother, to break the chains which trammel his family, to place the Dauphin on the throne, and to restore to France her ancient constitution.
We are still, as Aline will have told you in her last letter, under the same difficulty of making a decision for the future. Rabouillet has contrived, at considerable peril to himself, to send me fifty Louis saved before the confiscations took place, and he tells me also good loyal soul, that he has buried the best of the silver so that it should not be seized. Almost I begin to think that your proposal which we treated perhaps too lightly at the time, offers the only practical relief of our difficulties. But I am reluctant to become a burden upon you, my dear godson, nor have I the right.
Aline is well, and she sends you her affectionate greetings with mine. She talks of you constantly from which it follows that her thoughts are constantly with you and that she misses you. This separation is not the least of our sorrows. But you are wise not to sell your land at a sacrifice in a time when we do not know where to look for our next resources.