islator and a general-in-chief." As for the
lady, "les charmes de cette maussade creature" merely evoked his scorn.
It does not appear that Jourdan's escapade produced any ill effects in a
military sense, but it was against the regulations, and Decaen was as yet
as much lawyer as soldier.

When the revolutionary wars broke out, and France was ringed round by a
coalition of enemies, the voice of "la patrie en danger" rang in the ears
of the young student like a call from the skies. He was twenty-two years
of age when two deputies of the Legislative Assembly came down to Caen
and made an appeal to the manhood of the country to fly to arms. Decaen,
fuming with patriotic indignation, threw down his quill, pitched his
calf-bound tomes on to their shelf, and was the first to inscribe his
name upon the register of the fourth battalion of the regiment of
Calvados, an artillery corps. He was almost immediately despatched to
Mayence on the Rhine, where Kleber (who was afterwards to serve with
distinction under Bonaparte in Egypt) hard pressed by the Prussians,
withdrew the French troops into the city (March, 1793) and prepared to
sustain a siege.

Decaen rose rapidly, by reason not merely of his bull-dog courage and
stubborn tenacity, but also of his intelligence and integrity. He
received his "baptism of fire" in an engagement in April, when Kleber
sent a detachment to chase a Prussian outpost from a neighbouring village
and to collect whatever forage and provisions might be obtained. He was
honest enough to confess--and his own oft-proved bravery enabled him to
do so unashamed--that, when he first found the bullets falling about him,
he was for a moment afraid. "I believe," he wrote, "that there are few
men, however courageous they may be, who do not experience a chill, and
even a feeling of fear, when for the first time they hear around them the
whistling of shot, and above all when they first see the field strewn
with killed and wounded comrades."* (* Memoires 1 13.) But he was a
sergeant-major by this time, and remembered that it was his duty to set
an example; so, screwing up his courage to the sticking-place by an
effort of will, and saying to himself that it was not for a soldier of
France to quail before a ball, he deliberately wheeled his horse to the
front of a position where a regiment was being shaken by the enemy's
artillery fire, and by his very audacity stiffened the wavering troops
and saved the situation.

Af