“I will give you a regiment, Calvert, but I need you near my person.  There is no one upon whom I can rely—­I wish you could be my aide-de-camp again.  It would be like old times once more,” he said, looking at the young man with so harassed and despondent a glance that Calvert was both surprised and alarmed.

“I could wish for nothing better,” he replied, “but surely you do not mean what you say—­you have many others upon whom you can count.”

“Almost no one,” replied Lafayette, briefly.  “I distrust my officers and am myself suspected of intriguing with the enemy.  I know not what day I may be forced to fly across the frontier.  No one is safe, and I dare not count upon my troops to obey commands.  Although there are only thirty thousand Austrians in Flanders, I am not sure that we can beat them,” he said, bitterly.

On the 27th of April, Lafayette, who had moved his camp to Givet, received despatches from Dumouriez detailing the plan of campaign against Belgium.  According to this plan, Lafayette, with ten thousand picked men, was to advance by forced marches upon Namur.  He was to be supported by two divisions of the army of the North, one of four thousand men under General Dillon, which was to move from its encampment at Lille upon Tournay, and the other of ten thousand troops under General Biron, which was to advance from Valenciennes upon Mons. Before daybreak on the morning of the 28th Lafayette had his army in motion and, as they rode out of the city gates together, Calvert noted that the depression and anxiety which had weighed upon the General so heavily had disappeared and that he had regained something of his old fire and intrepidity.

This renewal of confidence was cruelly dissipated three days later when, on reaching Bouvines, half-way to Namur, after a fifty-league march over bad roads, Lafayette was met by frightened, breathless couriers with despatches detailing the humiliating disasters which had befallen both Biron’s and Dillon’s divisions.  The former, who had advanced upon Quievrain and succeeded in occupying that town, was utterly routed on arriving before Mons, and fled with the loss of all his baggage.  Dillon met with even a more tragic and shameful fate.  Moving upon Tournay, where a strong body of Austrians was ready to receive him, his men were seized with a sudden panic and fled back to the gates of Lille, where, mad with fear and crying that Dillon had betrayed them, they brutally murdered him.  This disastrous news being confirmed the following day by further despatches, Lafayette was forced to fall back to Maubeuge without striking a blow, and thus ended Calvert’s hopes of seeing a campaign which had promised most brilliantly.  The news of these defeats creating the greatest sensation both at the front and in Paris, Rochambeau resigned his command, Grave was replaced by Servan in the ministry, and the army was reorganized.