reme, he was also courageous and was not afraid or
ashamed to confess his faults.

"I have learned much," he said to Calvert one evening when they were
alone in the General's quarters, "and am beginning to have radically
different opinions upon some subjects from those I entertained but a
short while ago. Sometimes I ask myself if my call for the
States-General did not open for France a Pandora's box of evils. What
has become of all my efforts?" he said, pushing away a map of the
Austrian Netherlands which they had been studying together and beginning
to pace the room agitatedly. "Instead of the wise ministers prevailing
at Paris, a horde of mad, insensate creatures are ruling the Assembly,
the city, the whole country! If only there were some man courageous
enough to defy the Jacobins and their power--to meet them on their own
ground and conquer them! What can I do at this distance, overwhelmed
with military duties, restricted by my official position? I have been
thinking of addressing a letter to the Assembly," he went on, suddenly
turning to Calvert, "a letter of warning against the Jacobin power, of
reproach that they should be ruled by that ignoble faction, or
remonstrance against their unwarrantable proceedings, and as soon as I
can find the time to write such a letter, I shall do so, and despatch it
to Paris by my secretary, let the consequences be what they may."

This design was not accomplished until the middle of June, for, at the
beginning of the month, a number of skirmishes and night attacks took
place between the Austrians, who had encamped near Maubeuge, and
Lafayette's troops, and the General was too much occupied with the
military situation to busy himself with affairs at Paris. These attacks
culminated in a bloody and almost disastrous engagement for the patriot
army on the 11th of June.

The Austrians, reinforced by the emigrant army which had been left at
Brussels and in which Calvert knew d'Azay held a captain's commission,
advanced during the early afternoon of June 11th and attacked the
vanguard of Lafayette's army, encamped two miles from Maubeuge, farther
up the Sambre, and commanded by Gouvion. Although the French occupied a
formidable position, being securely intrenched on rising ground
fortified by a dozen redoubts and batteries arranged in tiers, the enemy
advanced with such fierceness and intrepidity that Gouvion had all he
could do to keep his gunners from deserting their posts. The infa