joining the army was suddenly crystallized by the
situation in which he found himself, and though this
resolution was strongly opposed by Mr. Morris, who,
with keen foresight, prophesied the speedy overthrow
of the constitution and the downfall of Lafayette
with the King, he adhered to it. D’Azay
being safely out of the country—he had
retreated to Brussels and joined a small detachment
of the emigrant army still there—and Adrienne
protected by his name, his one desire was to forget
in action his misfortunes and to remove himself from
the scene of them. It was this desire, rather
than any enthusiasm for the cause in which he was
engaged, which impelled him to offer his services
to Lafayette. Indeed, it was with no very sanguine
belief in that cause or hope of its success that he
prepared to go to Metz. Although he believed,
with Mr. Morris, that the only hope of France lay
in the suppression of internal disorder and the union
of interests which a foreign war would bring about,
yet he could not regard with much horror the threatenings
of the proscribed emigres and the military preparations
making by the allies to prevent the spread of the
revolution into their own territories. Indeed,
so great was his contempt for the ministers of Louis
and for their mad and selfish policy that he confessed
to himself, but for his desire to serve under his old
commander, he would almost as soon have joined d’Azay
at Brussels, or taken a commission with the Austrians
under Marshal Bender, who commanded in the Low Countries.
This division of sympathies felt by Calvert animated
thousands of other breasts, so that whole regiments
of cavalry went over to the enemy, and officers and
men deserted daily. Berwick, Mirabeau, Bussy,
de la Chatre, with their commands, crossed over the
Rhine and joined the Prince de Conde at Worms.
The highest in command were suspected of intriguing
with the enemy; men distrusted their superiors, and
officers could place no reliance on their men.
Of the widespread and profound character of this feeling
of distrust Mr. Calvert had no adequate idea until
he joined the army of the centre at Metz in the middle
of April. Although Lafayette had, since January,
been endeavoring to discipline his troops, to animate
them with confidence, courage, and endurance, they
had defied his every effort. Indeed, what wonder
that an army composed of the scum of a revolutionary
populace, without knowledge of arms, suspicious, violent,
unused to every form of military restraint, should
defy organization in three months? Perhaps no
sovereign ever entered upon a great conflict less prepared
than did Louis when he declared war against the King
of Hungary and Bohemia—for Francis was
not yet crowned Emperor of Austria. But that unhappy
monarch found himself in a situation from which the
only issue was a recourse to arms. Confronted
on the one hand by a republican party of daily increasing
power and on the other by an aristocratical one openly
allied with sovereigns who were suspected of a desire
to partition his dominion among themselves as Poland
had been, his one hope lay in warring his way out
between the two.