Calvert of Strathore eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 353 pages of information about Calvert of Strathore.

Calvert of Strathore eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 353 pages of information about Calvert of Strathore.
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.

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Calvert of Strathore from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.