forms 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 Chalons by forced marches, in order to join his general.
Hearing his mistake at Chalons, 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 Chalons with three thousand men, where
he also expected to find Dumouriez, but had only found in the city ten
battalions of _federes_ 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