The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

All his arrangements being made and head-quarters established at Sainte-Menehould, in the centre of the army, Dumouriez, annoyed at the reports, spread by fugitives, of his having been routed, wrote to the assembly: "I have been obliged," he wrote to the President, "to abandon the camp of Grandpré; our retreat was complete, when a panic spread through the army—ten thousand men fled before one thousand five hundred Prussian hussars. All is repaired, and I answer for everything."

At the news of the retreat of Grandpré, Kellermann, believing Dumouriez defeated, and fearful of falling himself among the Prussian forces, whom he supposed to be at the extremity of the defile of Argonne, had retreated as far as Vitry. Couriers from Dumouriez reassuring him, he again advanced, but with the slowness of a man who fears an ambush at every step. He hesitated while he obeyed. On the other side, Beurnonville, the friend and confidant of Dumouriez, had met the fugitives of Chazot's corps. Wholly disconcerted by their statements of the complete rout of his general, Beurnonville, with some dragoons, had ascended a hill, whence he perceived Argonne, and the bare heaths which extend from Grandpré to Sainte-Menehould.

It was on the morning of the 17th, at the moment when Dumouriez's army was moving from Dammartin to Sainte-Menehould. At the sight of this body of troops, whose uniforms and flags he could not distinguish in the heavy mist, Beurnonville had no doubt but that it was the Prussian army advancing in pursuit of the French. He immediately faced about, and advanced to Châlons by forced marches, in order to join his general. Hearing his mistake at Châlons, Beurnonville gave only twelve hours' rest to his harassed men, and arrived on the 19th with the ten thousand warlike soldiers whom he had led so far to the field of battle. Dumouriez passed them all in review, recognizing all the officers by their names, and the soldiers by their countenances, while they all saluted their leader with the loudest acclamations. The battalions and squadrons which he had carefully formed, disciplined, and accustomed to fire during the dilatory proceedings of Luckner with the army of the North, defiled before him, covered with the dust of their long march, their horses jaded, uniforms torn, shoes in holes, but their arms as perfect and as bright as if they were on parade.

Dumouriez had scarcely dismounted when Westermann and Thouvenot, his two confidential staff officers, came to inform him that the Prussian army, en masse, had passed the peak of Argonne, and were deploying on the hills of La Lune, on the other side of the Tourbe, opposite to him. At the same instant young Macdonald, his aide-de-camp, who had been sent, on the previous evening, on the road to Vitry, came galloping up, and brought him intelligence of the approach of the long-expected Kellermann, who at the head of twenty thousand men of the army of Metz, and some thousands of volunteers of Lorraine, was only at two hours' distance. Thus the fortune of the Revolution and the genius of Dumouriez, seconding each other, brought at the appointed hour and to the fixed spot, from the two extremities of France and from the depths of Germany, the forces which were to assail and those which were to defend the empire.

At the same moment Dumouriez, recalling his isolated detachments, prepared for a struggle, by concentrating all his scattered forces. General Dubouquet had retired to Châlons with three thousand men, where he also expected to find Dumouriez, but had only found in the city ten battalions of fédérés and volunteers, who had arrived from Paris, and, hearing of the retreat of the army, mutinied against their chiefs, cut off the head of one of their officers, taking others with them, plundered the army stores, murdered the colonel of the regiment of Vexin, and then, in confused masses, took the road to Paris, proclaiming everywhere Dumouriez's treason and demanding his head. Dumouriez was alarmed lest these ruffians should come in contact with his army, for such bands sowed sedition wherever they went.

General Stengel, after having ravaged the country between Argonne and Sainte-Menehould, in order to cut off all supplies from the Prussians, fell back beyond the Tourbe, and posted himself with the vanguard on the hills of Lyron, opposite the heights of La Lune, where the Duke of Brunswick was posted.

Dampierre's camp, separated from that of Dumouriez by the trenches and shallows of the Auve, was assigned to Kellermann, but he passed beyond this spot, and posted his entire army and baggage on the heights of Valmy, in advance of Dampierre, on the left of that of Sainte-Menehould. The line of Kellermann's encampment, nearer to the enemy, on its left, touched on its right the line of Dumouriez, and thus formed with the principal army an angle, against which the enemy could not send forth its attacking columns without being at once overwhelmed by the French artillery in both flanks. Dumouriez, perceiving in a moment that Kellermann, who was too much involved and too much isolated on the plateau of Valmy, might be turned by the Prussian masses, sent General Chazot, at the head of eight battalions and eight squadrons, to post them behind the heights of Gizaucourt, and be under Kellermann's orders. He next desired General Stengel and Beurnonville to advance to the right of Valmy with twenty-six battalions—his rapid coup d'œil assuring him that this would be the Duke of Brunswick's point of attack.