y have forgotten the Argonne?"

On the 20th of June in the following year Louis Philippe drove into
town from Twickenham to learn the news from the Low Countries. His
sons still know the spot where he found his old commander
gesticulating on the pavement at Hammersmith, and learned from him how
the great war, which began with their victory at Valmy, had ended
under Napoleon at Waterloo.

XV

THE CATASTROPHE OF MONARCHY

The calculations of the Girondins were justified by the event. Four
months after the declaration of war the throne had fallen, and the
king was in prison. Next to Dumouriez the principal members of the new
ministry were the Genevese Claviere, one of Mirabeau's advisers, and
the promoter of the assignats, Servan, a meritorious officer, better
known to us as a meritorious military historian; and Roland, whose
wife shared, on a lower scale, the social influence and intellectual
celebrity of Madame de Stael.

Dumouriez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, is one of the great
figures of the Revolution. He was excessively clever rather than
great, agreeable, and abounding in resource, not only cool in danger,
as a commander should be, but steadfast and cheerful when hope seemed
lost, and ready to meet the veterans of Frederic with undisciplined
volunteers, and officers who were the remnant of the royal army.
Without principle or conviction or even scruple, he had none of the
inhumanity of dogmatic revolutionists. To the king, whom he despised,
he said, "I shall often displease you, but I shall never deceive you."
He was not an accomplice of the conspiracy to compromise him and to
ruin him by war, and would have saved him if the merit and the reward
had been his own. He did not begin well, in the arts either of war or
peace. He employed all his diplomacy, all his secret service money, in
the endeavour to make Prussia neutral. Nothing availed against the
indignation of the Prussians at French policy, and their contempt for
French arms. The officers received orders to make ready for a march to
Paris, and were privately told that it would be a mere parade. The
first encounter with Austrians on Belgian soil confirmed this
persuasion, for the French turned and fled, and murdered one of their
generals.

Dumouriez's credit was shaken, and the Girondin leaders, who could not
rely on him to make the coming campaign turn towards the execution of
their schemes, revived the question of the clergy. On May 27 Ve