he camp at Chalons, and
intoxicated with massacre and sedition, were those who most threatened
the subordination of the camp, saying openly that the ancient officers
were traitors, and that it was necessary to purge the army, as they had
Paris, of its aristocrats. Dumouriez posted these battalions apart from
the others, placed a strong force of cavalry behind them, and two pieces
of cannon on their flank. Then, affecting to review them, he halted at
the head of the line, surrounded by all his staff and an escort of one
hundred hussars. "Fellows," said he--"for I will not call you either
citizens or soldiers--you see before you this artillery, behind you this
cavalry; you are stained with crimes, and I do not tolerate here
assassins or executioners. I know that there are scoundrels among you
charged to excite you to crime. Drive them from among you, or denounce
them to me, for I shall hold you responsible for their conduct." The
battalions trembled and at once assumed the same spirit that pervaded
the army.

The ancient feelings of honor were associated in the camps with
patriotism, and Dumouriez encouraged it among his troops. Every day he
received from Paris threats of dismissal, to which he replied in terms
of defiance. "I will conceal my dismissal," he wrote, "until the day
when I behold the flight of the enemy: I will then show it to my
soldiers, and return to Paris, to suffer the punishment my country
inflicts on me for having saved her in spite of herself."

Three commissioners of the Convention, Sillery, Carra, and Prieur,
arrived at the camp on the 24th, to proclaim the Republic, and Dumouriez
did not hesitate. Although a royalist, he yet felt that at present it
was not a question of government, but of the safety of the country; and
besides, his ambition was vast as his genius, vague as the future. A
republic agitated at home, threatened from abroad, could not but be
favorable to an ambitious soldier at the head of an army who adored him;
for when royalty was abolished, there was no one of higher rank in the
nation than its generalissimo. The commissioners had also instructions
to order the retreat of the army behind the Marne. Dumouriez asked and
obtained from them six days' delay; on the seventh, at sunrise, the
French videttes beheld the heights of La Lune deserted, and the columns
of the Duke of Brunswick slowly defiling between the hills of Champagne,
and taking the direction of Grandpre. Fortune had justi