General Houchard, it would appear, stood behind a hedge, on this Hondschooten occasion; wherefore they have since guillotined him.  A new General Jourdan, late Serjeant Jourdan, commands in his stead:  he, in long-winded Battles of Watigny, ’murderous artillery-fire mingling itself with sound of Revolutionary battle-hymns,’ forces Austria behind the Sambre again; has hopes of purging the soil of Liberty.  With hard wrestling, with artillerying and ca-ira-ing, it shall be done.  In the course of a new Summer, Valenciennes will see itself beleaguered; Conde beleaguered; whatsoever is yet in the hands of Austria beleaguered and bombarded:  nay, by Convention Decree, we even summon them all ’either to surrender in twenty-four hours, or else be put to the sword;’—­a high saying, which, though it remains unfulfilled, may shew what spirit one is of.

Representative Drouet, as an Old-Dragoon, could fight by a kind of second nature; but he was unlucky.  Him, in a night-foray at Maubeuge, the Austrians took alive, in October last.  They stript him almost naked, he says; making a shew of him, as King-taker of Varennes.  They flung him into carts; sent him far into the interior of Cimmeria, to ’a Fortress called Spitzberg’ on the Danube River; and left him there, at an elevation of perhaps a hundred and fifty feet, to his own bitter reflections.  Reflections; and also devices!  For the indomitable Old-dragoon constructs wing-machinery, of Paperkite; saws window-bars:  determines to fly down.  He will seize a boat, will follow the River’s course:  land somewhere in Crim Tartary, in the Black Sea or Constantinople region:  a la Sindbad!  Authentic History, accordingly, looking far into Cimmeria, discerns dimly a phenomenon.  In the dead night-watches, the Spitzberg sentry is near fainting with terror:  Is it a huge vague Portent descending through the night air?  It is a huge National Representative Old-dragoon, descending by Paperkite; too rapidly, alas!  For Drouet had taken with him ’a small provision-store, twenty pounds weight or thereby;’ which proved accelerative:  so he fell, fracturing his leg; and lay there, moaning, till day dawned, till you could discern clearly that he was not a Portent but a Representative!  (His narrative in Deux Amis, xiv. 177-86.)

Or see Saint-Just, in the Lines of Weissembourg, though physically of a timid apprehensive nature, how he charges with his ’Alsatian Peasants armed hastily’ for the nonce; the solemn face of him blazing into flame; his black hair and tricolor hat-taffeta flowing in the breeze; These our Lines of Weissembourg were indeed forced, and Prussia and the Emigrants rolled through:  but we re-force the Lines of Weissembourg; and Prussia and the Emigrants roll back again still faster,—­hurled with bayonet charges and fiery ca-ira-ing.