That Louis should be the advocate and leader of this war was the one inspiration of Narbonne, and, had the King persevered in this, he might have saved himself and his throne.  But, with his fatal vacillation, after having entered upon military preparations and committed himself to Narbonne’s policy, he suddenly abandoned him as he had abandoned so many of his advisers.  Grave replaced the dismissed and chagrined young minister, and Dumouriez, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, took into his hands all the power and glory of the war movement.  He developed and supplemented the plans which Narbonne had already formed, and, by the New Year, a vast army was assembled and the frontier divided into three great military districts.  On the left, the territory from Dunkirk to Philippeville was defended by the army under Rochambeau, forty thousand foot and eight thousand cavalry strong; Lafayette, with his army of the centre, of more than a hundred thousand men and some seven thousand horse, commanded between Philippeville and Weissenberg, while Luckner, with his army of the Rhine, stretched from Weissenberg to Bale.  Dumouriez’s diplomatic negotiations were apparently nearly as successful as his military operations.  Though he could not dissolve that “unnatural alliance” formed the year before at Pilnitz and enthusiastically adhered to by Prince Henri and the Duke of Brunswick with the young King of Hungary and Bohemia, yet, by the assassination of the King of Sweden, that country was no longer to be feared, England remained neutral by virtue of Pitt’s commercial policy, and many of the petty German principalities openly approved of and aided the French revolutionists.

With military and diplomatic affairs in this state and with Austria still holding out for her impossible conditions, ’twas easy for Dumouriez and the war party to browbeat the wellnigh desperate King into a declaration of hostilities that was to convulse the whole of Europe for nearly a quarter of a century.  This was done on the 20th of April, three days after Mr. Calvert had joined Lafayette at Metz, and was almost instantly followed by orders from Dumouriez to that general to advance with ten thousand men upon Namur and thence upon Brussels and Liege.

’Twas Dumouriez’s policy (and surely a wise one) to strike the first blow against Austria through her dependency, Flanders, which country, but two years before, had shown the strongest disposition to throw off Austrian rule.  How strong that disposition was, Dumouriez himself knew fully, for he had been sent by Montmorin on a secret mission into Belgium, and he felt assured that the Brabant patriots would rally to the standards of the French army.  Had that army been what he supposed, his plans might have succeeded and the humiliations and defeats of the spring campaign averted.

As has been said, Calvert joined the army at Metz a few days before the formal declaration of war was made, and so was there when General de Lafayette received orders to advance upon Namur.  He was much touched by the reception which Lafayette accorded him.