e, under the fire of my
redoubts, they will take Kellermann in flank, who will crush their
attacking columns between his battalions, charging down from Valmy and
the batteries of my _corps d'armee_. If they leave the French army, and
cut off its retreat to Paris by marching on Chalons, the army, facing
about, will follow them to Paris, increasing in number at every step.
The reenforcements of the army of the Rhine and army of the North, which
are on the march; the battalions of scattered volunteers, which I shall
assemble as I cross the revolted provinces, will swell the amount of my
armed troops to sixty thousand or seventy thousand men. The Prussians
will march across a hostile country, and make every step with
hesitation, while each advance will give me fresh troops. I shall await
them under the walls of Paris. An invading army, placed between a
capital of six hundred thousand souls, who close their gates, and a
national army, which cuts off their retreat, is a destroyed army. France
will be saved in the heart of France, instead of on the frontiers; but
still she will be saved."

Thus reasoned Dumouriez, when the first sounds of the Prussian cannon,
resounding from the heights of Valmy, came to announce to him that the
Duke of Brunswick, having perceived the danger of advancing, and thus
leaving the French army behind him, had attacked Kellermann. It was not
the Duke of Brunswick, however, but the young King of Prussia, who had
commanded the attack. The Prussian army, which the generalissimo wished
to extend gradually from Rheims to Argonne, parallel to the French army,
received orders to advance in a body on Kellermann's position. On the
19th it marched to Somme-Tourbe, and remained all night under arms. The
report was spread in the head-quarters of the King of Prussia that the
French were meditating a retreat on Chalons, and that the movements
perceptible in their line were only intended to mask this retrograde
march. The King was vexed at a plan of a campaign which always allowed
them to escape. He thought he should surprise Dumouriez in the false
position of an army which had raised his camp. The Duke of Brunswick,
whose military authority began to suffer with the failure of his
preceding manoeuvres, in vain sought the intervention of General
Koeler to moderate the ardor of the King. The attack was resolved upon.

On the 20th, at 6 A.M., the Duke marched at the head of the Prussian
advanced guard upon Somme-Bion