CHAPTER IV.

WHAT A BATTLE SEEMS LIKE TO THE SOLDIER--TERRIBLE TIMES IN PARIS--CIVIL WAR AND MURDER.

"And so," said Drake one evening, to my grandfather, shortly after the memorable duel in the park, "so you were really frightened?"

"I was sir, and I'm----"

He said no more, but hung his head.

"You are ashamed of being afraid. Eh?"

"I think so, sir. I'm afraid, too, that I'll never make a soldier."

"Nonsense, lad, nonsense. Right well do I remember my own first fight. It was my first real fight, too. It is some years ago now, and I was still an ensign, when clouds of war began in the East. I knew nothing at all about fighting then, and I didn't know the least little bit about politics.

"Indeed," he added laughing, "I don't know much about politics yet, and don't want to. I know we have a King and a Parliament, and that when most of them say one way, then they poke up the British lion, then come busier times in the dockyard and busier times in barracks, war is declared and we soldiers go away to fight, but to each of us, individually, a battle is all a muddle. It is just marching and counter-marching, shooting and fighting, advancing and retreating, and so on and so forth--a most puzzling complication. Sometimes, when you feel sure that you have beaten the enemy pretty nearly off the face of the earth, you find that it is your side that has been beaten, and that you have to retreat. At other times when you lie down exhausted after a hard day's fearful fighting, not caring whether you ever awake again after you get to sleep on the hard, cold ground, because you think that your side has sustained defeat, you are gloriously surprised to find out next morning that victory is crowning you with glory, that the enemy is in full retreat, and your regiment has received orders to follow them up."

"Along with other regiments, I suppose," my grand-daddy ventured to remark.

"Yes, yes, of course with other regiments. But perhaps it is a foggy, muggy, miserable morning, and you can't see any other regiments, only a mounted officer or orderly galloping here and there in the mist, looking more like a ghost than a man. That is war, lad, but that isn't the worst of it.

"But let me see. What was I going to tell you about?"

"Your first fight, and your first fright, sir."

"O, yes, so it was. Well, there had been a terrible Reign of Terror in France. Some day you may read an account of those massacres, treason, treachery, and all combined. I know all about it by heart, but it isn't wholesome reading for young fellows like you, so I shall say little about it.

"But, briefly, boy--for I can see by your eyes that you want to know a little--in 1792 war broke out between France and Austria, and fighting began on the Flemish frontier.

"The French had little honour and glory in their first battles anyhow. The Austrians walked through them, or would have done, had they waited, but, instead of that, they not only bolted like so many rabbits, but even murdered their own officers.

"Revolution was smouldering then in Paris. The armies of France lay idle in front of the foe, afraid to attack, ashamed to retire.

"Then, as the time flew past--by weeks and months--and nothing was done against the foe, the people of Paris became madly incensed against the King and his profligate court, whom they accused of treason against the people's rights.

"King Louis behaved like a fool, if he was not one out-and-out. He could not recognise that the people had a mind and a will of its own--that his subjects were not slaves. His Parliament, or Assembly, desired to banish the priests that resisted its will. The King would not submit. The people feared invasion, hardly knowing the day or hour when the enemy should conquer and drive in their armies, and appear before their gates; the Assembly, therefore, called for volunteers to drill and make ready, and even encamp outside the city. The King saw no necessity. He even dismissed the Minister whom the populace delighted to honour and obey.

"This enraged the people beyond measure, and the streets of Paris were filled with a yelling, haranguing, and, I fear, blood-thirsty mob.

"This mob, at midsummer, actually forced its way into the Tuileries.

"Even this had not the effect of arousing the King to a sense of impending danger. He was surrounded by his priests, his profligates, and worse.

"But now the Austrians got allies. The Prussians joined them, and France was invaded in earnest. Here was an army of fifty thousand Prussians, commanded by the brave Duke of Brunswick, marching along the banks of the Moselle, with an army of Austrians, or two rather, pouring in from Belgium and the Upper Rhine.

"And now the end began to draw near, for in the name of the Emperor of Austria, and the King of the Prussians, a proclamation was issued to the people of France.

"This manifesto declared that the allied armies were marching on Paris to take the part of the injured King--so they called him, or thought him.

"'The city of Paris,' it went on, 'and its inhabitants, without class distinction, are hereby warned that they must submit immediately to their King, Louis XVI.; set that Prince at entire liberty, and show him, and all the Royal Family, that inviolability of respect which the law of Nature and of nations imposes on subjects towards their sovereigns. Their Imperial and Royal Highnesses will hold all the members of the Assembly, the Municipality, and National Guard of Paris responsible before military tribunals for all events, and _with their heads_, without hope of pardon.'

"They--the allies--further declared that if the Château of the Tuileries were forced or insulted, or the least violence offered to the King or Queen, or any of the Royal Family, and provision not at once made for their preservation, safety, and liberty, they--the said allied armies--would deliver the city of Paris to military execution and total overthrow.

"This proclamation was issued on the 25th of July."

"O dear! said my innocent grandfather, that was nearly as bad as Culloden, and the massacres that followed."

Captain Drake laughed.

"Wait a moment, lad, and make sure.

"That proclamation decided the fate of the King. The awful Bastille, which had been so long the city's terror, had already been destroyed, and, as soon as word was brought that the Duke, with his Prussians, had crossed the north-east frontier, Danton, who was leader of the demon democrats of Paris, assembled his ragged but desperate army, to destroy for ever the monarchy that the invaders seemed bent on supporting.

"The Republic was won* in a single day by the populace of Paris, amidst the roar of cannon and the flash of bayonets.

* _Vide_ FYFFE'S _Modern Europe_, vol. i.

"On the 10th of August Danton let loose the armed mob upon the Tuileries. Louis quitted the palace, without giving orders to the guard either to fight or to retire.

"There was nothing to defend, for the monarch no longer hoped for anything beyond his life; but the guard were ignorant that their master desired them to offer no resistance, and one hundred and sixty of the mob were shot down by them before an order reached the troops to abandon the palace.

"The cruelties which followed the victory of the people indicated the fate in store for those whom the invaders came to protect.

"It is doubtful whether the foreign Courts would have made any serious attempt to undo the social changes effected by the Revolution in France; but no one supposed that those thousands of self-exiled nobles who now returned behind the guns of Brunswick had returned in order to take their places peacefully in the new social order.

"In their own imagination, as much as in that of the people, they returned with fire and sword to repossess themselves of rights of which they had been despoiled, and to take vengeance on the men who were responsible for the changes made in France since 1789.

"In the midst of a panic .... Danton inflamed the nation with his own passionate courage and resolution; he unhappily also thought it necessary, to a successful national defence, that the reactionary party at Paris should be paralysed by a terrible example.

"The prisons were filled with persons suspected of hostility to the national cause, and in the first days of September many hundreds of these unfortunate persons were massacred by gangs of assassins, paid by a committee of the Municipality. Danton had made up his mind that the liberty of France could not be saved without striking terror into the hearts of its enemies .... and the sword, once drawn, was not sheathed until the best voices of France were silent, and the exercise of power had become but another name for the commission of crime.

"The Republic was then proclaimed, and the war became a crusade of Democracy.

"You see, my lad, France, not content with having banished Monarchy, and turned herself into a Republic, would fain have murdered every king and queen in the world, and set up puppet--puppy, if you like the word--presidents in their place.

"The leader of the French army was Dumourier, who, after checking Brunswick, carried the war into Germany itself, which was then in a poor condition to defend itself.

"But I see you are getting tired, lad, and want me to come to my first fight."

"No," said my grandfather. "I like to hear you speak, sir."

"I only want to tell you what drew Britain into the turmoil.

"Well, the French, after crossing the frontier, won the battle of Jenappes, and the Austrians abandoned the Netherlands.

"After this victory the French became excited by the fever of conquest. Savoy and Nice were annexed. Corsica had already been reconciled.

"And now, elated by their luck, there was no saying into what country they might not carry fire and sword. And not only fire and sword, but Revolution in its blackest and bloodiest garments.

"For it was decreed that in every country which should be occupied by the armies of the French Republic, the generals thereof should announce the abolition of all existing authorities; of nobility and every feudal right and monopoly; proclaim the sovereignty of the people; form provisional Governments therefrom to which no officer of a former Government should be eligible.

"Well, as the agents of the French were fostering sedition in every state, and stirring up bad blood even in Britain itself by the preaching of the Rights of Man, and as the people of this country could not forget the fearful massacres of September, we began to get impatient and to thirst for war.

"When a country thirsts for war, lad, an excuse soon comes.

"There was a peace party in Britain, but as soon as news came to London that the French King had been executed, war became inevitable, and was declared on the 3rd of February by the French, just to be beforehand with the British.

"Pitt, our Prime Minister, spared no pains now to isolate France, and to crush her by raising a great coalition against her. Holland at once joined us, then, later on, Naples, Tuscany, Spain, Portugal, and the Papal States.

"But there were two parties in France itself--the Girondins, who would have saved the King, if they could have at the same time kept up their own influence in Paris. But the populace and Mountain party saw through their falseness.

"And next came defeat and disaster, and even treason.

"The French General Dumourier opened the ball against Holland, but as the Austrians had beaten the French at Maestricht, and they were in full retreat before the foe, he had to return and fight the Austrians near Brussels.

"He was defeated, and Flanders was opened up to Austria. Then came the treason of this scoundrel Dumourier, for he coolly proposed uniting his beaten army with the Austrians, and to attack the Paris Convention, and restore Monarchy. He did not succeed, however, with his army, and was obliged to fly to the Austrian side, and was shot at, while he fled, by his own men.

"This treasonable coward brought ill-luck to the French, and they soon lost all they had won in the autumn before, except Mainz, which was garrisoned by a brave Republican army of 17,000.

"Castine, a French general, had to fall back upon Weissenburg.

"But worse than this happened to France, for civil war broke out. The large province of Vendée, a peasant people, were ordered to raise 300,000 men. They refused. They had not been pleased at the expulsion of the priests from Paris. They would rather fight the Parisians, and in this they were encouraged by their Church, and the Royalists still among them. So a civil war was inaugurated.

"The Government of Paris had only raw levies to send against them, composed for the most part of gutter-grubbers and cut-throats, and these the Vendéans soon put out of existence.

"Hitherto the Gironde party had held sway, but now, with Britain and Austria thundering at the northern gates of France, laying siege to Condé and Valenciennes, and driving the French army back before it, the Girondes lost the confidence of the people, and were openly charged with causing all the terrible troubles, even down to the civil war of La Vendée. The Convention was surrounded by armed men calling themselves a Commune, and the Mountain party arrested and crushed the Girondes.

"They escaped, however, and now civil war commenced in terrible earnest, Lyons, Marseilles, Normandy, and other departments rushing to arms to attack Paris. The Royalists, of course, thought they saw their opportunity, and joined these against the Mountain party.

"After the Lyons revolt, Robespierre the Bloody stepped upon the stage, and the Reign of Terror--far too awful even to think of--commenced.

"Well, my lad, it was early in the year 1793 that I first saw real service, and this was at Toulon."

"Tell me," said my grandfather eagerly.

And Captain Drake continued his story.