g his life; and when he should have
avenged his disgrace on the real causes of it, he chose to resent it on
him who, like himself, was merely an instrument, or a slave, in the hands
and under the whip of a tyrannical power.

After the imprisonment of General Hoche, in March, 1794, Jourdan
succeeded him as chief of the army of the Moselle. In June he joined,
with thirty thousand men, the right wing of the army of the North,
forming a new one, under the name of the army of the Sambre and Meuse. On
the 16th of the same month he gained a complete victory over the Prince
of Coburg, who tried to raise the siege of Charleroy. This battle, which
was fought near Trasegnies, is, nevertheless, commonly called the battle
of Fleurus. After Charleroy had surrendered on the 25th, Jourdan and his
army were ordered to act under the direction of General Pichegru, who had
drawn the plan of that brilliant campaign. Always envious of this
general, Jourdan did everything to retard his progress, and at last
intrigued so well that the army of the Sambre and the Meuse was separated
from that of the North.

With the former of these armies Jourdan pursued the retreating
confederates, and, after driving them from different stands and
positions, he repulsed them to the banks of the Rhine, which river they
were obliged to pass. Here ended his successes this year, successes that
were not obtained without great loss on our side.

Jourdan began the campaigns of 1795 and 1796 with equal brilliancy, and
ended them with equal disgrace. After penetrating into Germany with
troops as numerous as well-disciplined, he was defeated at the end of
them by Archduke Charles, and retreated always with such precipitation,
and in such confusion, that it looked more like the flight of a
disorderly rabble than the retreat of regular troops; and had not Moreau,
in 1796, kept the enemy in awe, few of Jourdan's officers or men would
again have seen France; for the inhabitants of Franconia rose on these
marauders, and cut them to pieces, wherever they could surprise or waylay
them.

In 1797, as a member of the Council of Five Hundred, he headed the
Jacobin faction against the moderate party, of which Pichegru was a
chief; and he had the cowardly vengeance of base rivalry to pride himself
upon having procured the transportation of that patriotic general to
Cayenne. In 1799, he again assumed the command of the army of Alsace and
of Switzerland; but he crossed the Rh