Jean-Étienne Dumouriez

“ Dumouriez had acquired great popularity in the club of the Jacobins by frequenting their meetings, and by wearing the red cap of liberty, an emblem borrowed from the Phrygians. The queen was highly indignant that one in sympathy with the Jacobins should be called into the ministry, and, as she was now heartily in sympathy with the emigrants and the allies, she was provoked by the vigorous measures adopted to repel them. Dumouriez was a soldier, not a statesman; a man of heroic character, brave, impulsive, and generous. He had great power over the mind of the king ”

“ Dumouriez had gone as [Pg 34] far as she wanted; he knew that some sensitive fiber remained in that indurated heart.
"Lord forbid I should so insult my queen!" he cried. "The nature of your majesty is too grand and noble for the worst of her enemies to be inspired with such an idea, she has given heroic proofs which I have admired, and which attached me to her."
"Then excuse me, and lend me your arm. I am so weak that I often fear I shall fall in a swoon." ”

“ Dumoulin, a celebrated French jurist, born at Paris; did for French law what Cujas (q. v.) did for Roman (1500-1560) .
Dumouriez, a French general, born at Cambrai, “a wiry, elastic, unwearied man ... creature,” as he boasted in his old age, “of God and his own sword ... on the whole, one of Heaven's Swiss”; took when already grey to the Revolution and fought on its behalf; gained the battles of Valmy and Jemmapes; conquered Belgium, but being distrusted, passed over to the ranks of the enemies of France; a man really “without faith; wanted above all things work, work on any side” ”

“ Since the execution of the King, he had been at open enmity with the Jacobins. He now proposed to the Austrian commander to unite with him in an attack upon the Convention, and in re-establishing monarchy in France. The first pledge of Dumouriez's treason was the surrender of three commissioners sent by the Convention to his camp; the second was to have been the surrender of the fortress of Condé. But Dumouriez had overrated his influence with the army. Plainer minds than his own knew how to deal with a general who intrigues with the foreigner. ”

“ Meanwhile Dumouriez had devoted his attention to the internal state of his own country, and amongst the very numerous memorials which he sent in to the government was one on the defence of Normandy and its ports, which procured him in 1778 the post of commandant of Cherbourg, which he administered with much success for ten years. He became maréchal de camp in 1788; but his ambition was not satisfied, and at the outbreak of the Revolution, seeing the opportunity for carving out a career, he went to Paris, where he joined the Jacobin Club. ”

“ An English army, under the Duke of York, joined the Austrians, under the Prince of Coburg, and Dumouriez was utterly defeated by the allies at Neerwinden on the 21st March 1793. The defeat became a rout, and the French were driven from Belgium as speedily as they had conquered it. Dumouriez then made a fruitless effort to lead his army against the Convention. He arrested four deputies and the Minister for War who had been sent to suspend him from his command, but, finding that his army would not follow him, he deserted to the Austrians on the 5th April. ”

“ Dumouriez could not finish the sentence.
“I await—I expect death!” said the King, much moved; “and I pardon my enemies.”
He turned away, with quivering lips.
Dumouriez never saw Louis XVI again.
He fled from Paris, and especially from La Belle Liègoise, who, in her blood-colored dress, was now rising to utter power.
“Build the new parliament,” she cried, “on the site of the Bastille; and let every woman give her jewels, that the gold may be coined to pay for the work.” ”

“ That the Queen incessantly conspired to induce a foreign army to march into France, is very certain.
The King soon mistrusted Dumouriez, who at once offered to resign his position of Minister. The King at once accepted, and another friend was lost by royalty.
On taking his leave, Dumouriez foretold what was to happen.
[269]
“Sire,” said he, “you think you are about to save religion. You are destroying it. The priesthood will be killed; your crown will be taken from you ”

“ Another terrible battle ensued, in which the Duke of Orleans again won many laurels; but victory decided against the French. The army of Dumouriez was utterly routed. The Duke of Chartres had a horse shot from under him; but he spent the whole night upon the field, struggling to rally the fugitives. It was attributed to his heroism that the army did not, on that occasion, experience an irreparable disaster.
General Dumouriez now found himself in the most painful and perilous position. It was not safe for any leader of the Republican armies to allow himself to be defeated. ”

“ DUMOURIEZ, CHARLES FRANÇOIS (1739–1823) , French general, was born at Cambray in 1739. His father was a commissary of the royal army, and educated his son most carefully in various branches of learning. The boy continued his studies at the college of Louis-le-Grand, and in 1757 began his military career as a volunteer in the campaign of Rossbach. ”

“ Dumouriez replied, "I am deeply pained by the secret which your majesty has just imparted to me. I will not betray it. But I stand between the king and my nation, and I belong to my country. Permit me to say that the welfare of the king, your own, and that of your children, are linked with the Constitution. You are surrounded by enemies who are sacrificing you to their private interests. The Constitution, when once in vigor, so far from bringing misery upon the king, will constitute his happiness and glory. ”

“ Dumouriez supported the volunteer proposition at the council, in the hope that the new-comers would be Jacobins; that is, the Invisibles, by whom neither the Girondists nor the Feuillants would profit.
"If your majesty vetoes it," he said, firmly, "instead of the twenty thousand authorized, we shall have forty thousand unruly spirits in town, who may with one rush upset Constitution, Assembly, and the throne. Had we been vanquishers—But we must give in—I say accept."
But the queen urged the king to stand firm. As we know, she would rather be lost than be saved by Lafayette. ”

“ Dumouriez did not hesitate, but mounted the tribune, placed this sign of patriotism on his head, and at once assumed the emblem of the most prominent party, whilst this mute yet significant eloquence awakened a burst of enthusiasm on every side of the Salle. "Brothers and friends," said Dumouriez, "every instant of my life shall be devoted to carrying out the wishes of the people, and to justifying [Pg 419] the king's choice. I will employ in all negotiations the force of a free people, and before long these negotiations will produce a lasting peace or a decisive war. (Applause.) ”

“ All that autumn the quarrel between France and Europe remained doubtful, for though the armies of the Republic under Dumouriez won the battle of Jemappes, swept across the north-eastern frontier and occupied Belgium, while to the south another French army swept right up to the Rhine, Dumouriez himself knew well enough that a campaign undertaken merely upon enthusiasm, and with troops so mixed in character and many of them so undisciplined, would end fatally. ”

“ But Dumouriez was quite unable to act under the special circumstances in which he happened to be placed at the moment of his treason. A mere ambition had carried him from intrigue to intrigue among the politicians. He despised them as an active and capable soldier was compelled to despise them; he was too old to share any of their enthusiasms, even had his temperament permitted him to entertain any vision, political or religious. ”

“ Gensonné, on his return from his mission, had desired to enrich his party with this unknown man, whose eminence he foresaw from afar. He presented Dumouriez to his friends of the Assembly, to Guadet, Vergniaud, Roland, Brissot, and De Grave: communicated to them his own astonishment at, and confidence in, the twofold faculties of Dumouriez as diplomatist and soldier. He spoke of him as of a concealed saviour, whom fate had reserved for liberty. He conjured them to attach to themselves a man whose greatness would enhance their own. ”

“ On your account, I fear your friends still more than your enemies."—"God is my witness {173} that I wish for nothing but the welfare of France."—"I do not doubt it, Sire; but you will have to account to God, not solely for the purity but also for the enlightened execution of your intentions. You expect to save religion, and you destroy it. The priests will be massacred and your crown torn from you. Perhaps even your wife, your children..." Emotion prevented Dumouriez from going on. Tears stood in his eyes. He kissed the hand of Louis XVI. respectfully. ”

“ Dumouriez acted promptly. His subordinate Kellermann repulsed the Prussians at Valmy (September 20, 1792) , and he himself severely defeated the Austrians at Jemappes (November 6) . Returning to Paris, he was received with a popular ovation; but he was out of sympathy with the extremists in power, his old-fashioned methodical method of conducting war exposed him to the criticism of the ardent Jacobins, and a defeat would mean the end of his career. Defeat coming to him at Neerwinden in January 1793, he ventured all on a desperate stroke. ”

“ The convention, on learning the arrest of the commissioners, established itself as a permanent assembly, declared Dumouriez a traitor to his country, authorized any citizen to attack him, set a price on his head, decreed the famous committee of public safety, and banished the duke of Orleans and all the Bourbons from the republic. Although the Girondists had assailed Dumouriez as warmly as the Mountain, they were accused of being his accomplices, and this was a new cause of complaint added to the rest. Their enemies became every day more powerful ”

“ History should pause a moment before this man, who, without having assumed the name of Dictator, concentrated in himself during two years all expiring France, and exercised over his country the most incontestible of dictatorships—that of genius. Dumouriez was of the number of men who are not to be painted by merely naming them, but of those whose previous life explains their nature; who have in the past the secret of their future; who have, like Mirabeau, their existence spread over two epochs; who have their roots in two soils, and are only known by the perusal of every detail. ”

“ The proclamation by the Assembly that the country was in danger, caused volunteers in large numbers to set out from every portion of France. From Paris alone, in three days, an army of 32,000 men, completely equipped, were on the advance to the scene of conflict. General Dumouriez, in command at Sedan, drew up his lines of defense before the defiles of Argoun, where he thought he could make the most effectual stand against the invading host. The Duke of Brunswick fell fiercely upon his left wing, and, breaking through, poured his troops like a flood into the plains of Champagne. ”

“ Dumouriez imagined that he saw in this look and speech an allusion to personal danger and an insinuation of alarm. "I am more than fifty years old, madame," replied he, in a low tone, in which the firmness of the soldier was mingled with the pity of the man; "I have braved many perils in my life; and when I accepted the ministry, I well knew that my responsibility was not the greatest of my dangers." "Ah," cried the queen, with a gesture of horror, "this calumny and disgrace was alone wanting! You appear to believe me capable of causing you to be assassinated." ”

“ The revolution, with the movement imparted to it, was necessarily stronger than parties, than generals, and than Europe. Dumouriez went over to the Austrian camp with the duc de Chartres, colonel Thouvenot, and two squadrons of Berchiny. The rest of his army went to the camp at Famars, and joined the troops commanded by Dampierre. ”

“ In a word, Dumouriez had on the first contact exercised over Gensonné that influence, that ascendency, that empire which superiority, when it displays and humbles itself, never fails to acquire over minds to which it condescends to disclose itself.
This attractive power, the confidence of genius, was one of the characteristics of Dumouriez, and by that he subsequently made a conquest of the Girondists, the king, the queen, his army, the Jacobins, Danton,—Robespierre himself. It was what great men call their star,—a star which precedes them, and prepares their way. ”

“ The shouts and hootings ceased, and complete silence ensued. On leaving the Assembly, Dumouriez was surrounded by a group of persons before the door of the Feuillants, but their faces displayed no signs of anger toward him. As soon as he quitted the Assembly, his enemies, no longer intimidated by his presence, redoubled their attacks. Three or four deputies left the Chamber, and making their way to him through the crowd, said: "They are raising the devil inside; they would like to send you to Orleans." ”

“ Roland was appointed Minister of the Interior, and Dumouriez took the portfolio of Foreign Affairs. Dumouriez, who owed his appointment to the Girondists, for whom, nevertheless, he had a rich con [Pg 168] tempt, was the only person of note in the Government, but he possessed ability enough to compensate for all the deficiencies of his colleagues. Lax in morality and principle, he was a man of infinite resource, bold, ambitious and consummately adroit. He welcomed the idea of a conflict with Austria. ”