ittany to Burgundy, on most
plains of France, under most city walls, there march and
constitutionally wheel to the Ca-iraing mood of fife and drum--our clear
glancing phalanxes;--the song of the two hundred and fifty thousand,
virgin-led, is in the long light of July. Nevertheless, another song is
yet needed, for phalanx, and for maid. For, two springs and summers
having gone--amphisbaenic,--on the 28th of August, 1792, "Dumouriez rode
from the camp of Maulde, eastwards to _Sedan_."[70]

48. "And Longwi has fallen basely, and Brunswick and the Prussian king
will beleaguer Verdun, and Clairfait and the Austrians press deeper in
over the northern marches, Cimmerian Europe behind. And on that same
night Dumouriez assembles council of war at his lodgings in Sedan.
Prussians here, Austrians there, triumphant both. With broad highway to
Paris and little hindrance--_we_ scattered, helpless here and
there--what to advise?" The generals advise retreating, and retreating
till Paris be sacked at the latest day possible. Dumouriez, silent,
dismisses _them_,--keeps only, with a sign, Thouvenot. Silent thus, when
needful, yet having voice, it appears, of what musicians call tenor
quality, of a rare kind. Rubini-esque, even, but scarcely producible to
the fastidious ears at opera. The seizure of the forest of Argonne
follows--the cannonade of Valmy. The Prussians do not march on Paris
_this_ time, the autumnal hours of fate pass on--_ca ira_--and on the
6th of November, Dumouriez meets the Austrians also. "Dumouriez
wide-winged, they wide-winged--at and around Jemappes, its green heights
fringed and maned with red fire. And Dumouriez is swept back on this
wing and swept back on that, and is like to be swept back utterly, when
he rushes up in person, speaks a prompt word or two, and then, with
clear tenor-pipe, uplifts the hymn of the Marseillaise, ten thousand
tenor or bass pipes joining, or say some forty thousand in all, for
every heart leaps up at the sound; and so, with rhythmic march melody,
they rally, they advance, they rush death-defying, and like the fire
whirlwind sweep all manner of Austrians from the scene of action." Thus,
through the lips of Dumouriez, sings Tyrtaeus, Rouget de Lisle.[71] "Aux
armes--marchons." Iambic measure with a witness! in what wide strophe
here beginning--in what unthought-of antistrophe returning to that
council chamber in Sedan!

49. While these two great songs were thus being composed, and sung