aracter has been affected by the caprices of fortune. The Duke of
Brunswick's language to me, as we saw the Tricolor waving on the walls
of Longwy, the first fortress which lay in our road, was--"Sir, your
court must not be deceived. We shall probably take the town, and
defeat its wavering army; but up to this moment, we have not been
joined by a single peasant. The population are against us. This is not
a German war; it is more like yours in America. I have but one hundred
and twenty thousand men against twenty-five millions." To my remark,
"that there might be large body of concealed loyalty in France, which
only waited the advance of the Allies to declare itself," his calm and
grave reply was: "That I must not suffer my Government to suppose him
capable of abandoning the royal cause, while there was hope in
military means. That it was his determination to hazard all things
rather than chill the coalition. But this let me impress upon your
Ministry," said he, with his powerful eye turned full on me; "that if
intrigue in the German cabinets, or tardiness on the part of yours,
shall be suffered to impede my progress, all is at an end. I know the
French; if we pause, they will pour on. If we do not reach Paris, we
must prepare to defend Berlin and Vienna. If the war is not ended
within a month, it may last for those twenty years."

The commander-in-chief was true to his word. He lost no time. Before
night our batteries were in full play upon the bastions of Longwy, and
as our tents had not yet overtaken us, I lay down under a vineyard
shed in a circle of the staff, with our cloaks for our pillows,
listening to the roar of our artillery; until it mingled with my
dreams.

We were on horse an hour before daybreak, and the cannonade still
continued heavy. It was actively returned, and the ramparts were a
circuit of fire. As a spectacle, nothing could be more vivid,
striking, and full of interest. To wait for the slow approaches of a
formal siege was out of the question. Intelligence had reached us that
the scattered French armies, having now ascertained the point at which
the burst over the frontier was to be made, had been suddenly
combined, and had taken a strong position directly in our way to the
capital. A protracted siege would raise the country in our rear, and,
thus placed between two fires, the grand army might find itself
paralysed at the first step of the campaign. The place must be
battered until a breach was m