e or four hundred men by the effect of the laws
of 1790, which only admitted volunteers; these regiments, deprived of
their best officers by emigration, which had induced more than half to
go to the enemy's soil, and by the sudden creation of one hundred
battalions of volunteers, at the head of which they had placed the
officers remaining in France as instructors; these battalions and
regiments, without any _esprit de corps_, regarding each other with
jealousy or contempt; two feelings in the same army--the spirit of
discipline in the old ranks, the spirit of insubordination in the new
corps; old officers suspecting their men, soldiers doubtful of their
officers; a cavalry ill equipped and badly mounted; an infantry
competent and firm in regiments, raw and weak in battalions; pay in
arrear and paid in assignats greatly depreciated; insufficiently armed;
uniforms various, threadbare, torn, often in tatters; many soldiers
without shoes, or substituting handfuls of hay tied round the legs with
cord; the troops arriving from different armies and provinces, unknown
to each other, and scarcely knowing the name of the generals under whom
they had been enlisted--these generals themselves young and rash,
passing suddenly from obeying to command, or, old and methodical, unable
to make their formal modes comply with the dash required in desperate
warfare; and, finally, at the head of this incongruous army, a
general-in-chief fifty-three years of age, new to war, whom everybody
had a right to doubt, mistrustful of his troops, at variance with his
second in command, at issue with his government, whose daring yet
dilatory plan was not understood by any, and who had neither services in
the past nor the spell of victory on his sword to give authority or
confidence to his command--such were the French at Valmy. But the
enthusiasm of the country and the Revolution struggled in the heart of
this army, and the genius of war inspired the soul of Dumouriez.

Uneasy as to Kellermann's position, Dumouriez, on horseback from the
dawn of day, visited his line, extended his troops between
Sainte-Menehould and Gizaucourt, and galloped toward Valmy in order that
he might the better judge himself of the intentions of the Duke of
Brunswick and the point on which the Prussians were to concentrate their
efforts. He there found Kellermann giving his final orders to the
generals, who, on his left and right, were to have the responsibility of
the day. One