PART FIVE

UNDER THE MILL OF VALMY

INTRODUCTION

While the popular forces were gathered in Paris for that assault on the palace which proved so successful, the Prussian and Austrian army of invasion, under the command of the Duke of Brunswick, was marching against the French by the valley of the Moselle. It was accompanied by many of the French nobles who had emigrated, and who desired by any methods, even those of foreign invasion, the destruction of the Revolutionary movement. We have seen how Lafayette had the supreme opportunity of meeting that invasion and had refused it. The frontier was not crossed until some days after the palace had fallen, and after Lafayette had abandoned his army. The invasion was immediately successful. The frontier fortress of Verdun fell. The French forces were largely composed of unreliable volunteers. The regulars themselves had been badly demoralized, and the French army under General Dumouriez, whose task it now was to stop the invasion, lay upon the line of the Argonne, not a week’s march from Paris, with very little hope of defending that forest-ridge successfully. But by one of the strangest accidents in history, under this army when Dumouriez, had been successfully turned by the invaders and was in its most desperate plight, an action fought near the village of Valmy changed the whole story of Europe. The result of this action, which was in a tactical sense indecisive, and in which the opposing forces never came to close quarters, was that the invading army was checked in its career, was ultimately bound to retire, and the Revolution was granted just the time it required to raise and discipline new forces for the meeting of further invasions which were bound to follow. This action at Valmy, which, despite its indecisive tactical quality, was one of capital importance in the history of the world, was fought almost coincidently with the declaration of the Republic. On this same ground--a cannon-shot to the North--France and Germany to-day[A] stand opposed.

[note A: Feb. 25th, 1916.]

[Illustration: CEREMONIAL COSTUME OF THE CLERGY, THE NOBILITY, AND THE COMMONS

The three Orders in the National Assembly

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