Conquerors, conquered or hanged, forward we must." (There is, in Prudhomme, an atrocity a la Captain-Kirk reported of this Cavaignac; which has been copied into Dictionaries of Hommes Marquans, of Biographie Universelle, &c.; which not only has no truth in it, but, much more singular, is still capable of being proved to have none.) Which things also, even as the Representative spake them, were done. The Spring of the new Year sees Spain invaded: and redoubts are carried, and Passes and Heights of the most scarped description; Spanish Field-officerism struck mute at such cat-o'-mountain spirit, the cannon forgetting to fire. (Deux Amis, xiii. 205-30; Toulongeon, &c.) Swept are the Pyrenees; Town after Town flies up, burst by terror or the petard. In the course of another year, Spain will crave Peace; acknowledge its sins and the Republic; nay, in Madrid, there will be joy as for a victory, that even Peace is got.
Few things, we repeat, can be notabler than these Convention Representatives, with their power more than kingly. Nay at bottom are they not Kings, Ablemen, of a sort; chosen from the Seven Hundred and Forty-nine French Kings; with this order, Do thy duty? Representative Levasseur, of small stature, by trade a mere pacific Surgeon-Accoucheur, has mutinies to quell; mad hosts (mad at the Doom of Custine) bellowing far and wide; he alone amid them, the one small Representative,--small, but as hard as flint, which also carries fire in it! So too, at Hondschooten, far in the afternoon, he declares that the battle is not lost; that it must be gained; and fights, himself, with his own obstetric hand;--horse shot under him, or say on foot, 'up to the haunches in tide-water;' cutting stoccado and passado there, in defiance of Water, Earth, Air and Fire, the choleric little Representative that he was! Whereby, as natural, Royal Highness of York had to withdraw,--occasionally at full gallop; like to be swallowed by the tide: and his Siege of Dunkirk became a dream, realising only much loss of beautiful siege-artillery and of brave lives. (Levasseur, Memoires, ii. c. 2-7.)
General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge, on this Hondschooten occasion; wherefore they have since guillotined him. A new General Jourdan, late Serjeant Jourdan, commands in his stead: he, in long-winded Battles of Watigny, 'murderous artillery-fire mingling itself with sound of Revolutionary battle-hymns,' forces Austria behind the Sambre again; has hopes of purging the soil of Liberty. With hard wrestling, with artillerying and ca-ira-ing, it shall be done. In the course of a new Summer, Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered; Conde beleaguered; whatsoever is yet in the hands of Austria beleaguered and bombarded: nay, by Convention Decree, we even summon them all 'either to surrender in twenty-four hours, or else be put to the sword;'--a high saying, which, though it remains unfulfilled, may shew what spirit one is of.
Representative Drouet, as an Old-Dragoon, could fight by a kind of second nature; but he was unlucky. Him, in a night-foray at Maubeuge, the Austrians took alive, in October last. They stript him almost naked, he says; ****** a shew of him, as King-taker of Varennes. They flung him into carts; sent him far into the interior of Cimmeria, to 'a Fortress called Spitzberg' on the Danube River; and left him there, at an elevation of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, to his own bitter reflections.
Reflections; and also devices! For the indomitable Old-dragoon constructs wing-machinery, of Paperkite; saws window-bars: determines to fly down.
He will seize a boat, will follow the River's course: land somewhere in Crim Tartary, in the Black Sea or Constantinople region: a la Sindbad!