There was but one man in the camp who did not coincide in those glittering visions.  Let me once more do justice to a prince whose character has been affected by the caprices of fortune.  The Duke of Brunswick’s language to me, as we saw the Tricolor waving on the walls of Longwy, the first fortress which lay in our road, was—­“Sir, your court must not be deceived.  We shall probably take the town, and defeat its wavering army; but up to this moment, we have not been joined by a single peasant.  The population are against us.  This is not a German war; it is more like yours in America.  I have but one hundred and twenty thousand men against twenty-five millions.”  To my remark, “that there might be large body of concealed loyalty in France, which only waited the advance of the Allies to declare itself,” his calm and grave reply was:  “That I must not suffer my Government to suppose him capable of abandoning the royal cause, while there was hope in military means.  That it was his determination to hazard all things rather than chill the coalition.  But this let me impress upon your Ministry,” said he, with his powerful eye turned full on me; “that if intrigue in the German cabinets, or tardiness on the part of yours, shall be suffered to impede my progress, all is at an end.  I know the French; if we pause, they will pour on.  If we do not reach Paris, we must prepare to defend Berlin and Vienna.  If the war is not ended within a month, it may last for those twenty years.”

The commander-in-chief was true to his word.  He lost no time.  Before night our batteries were in full play upon the bastions of Longwy, and as our tents had not yet overtaken us, I lay down under a vineyard shed in a circle of the staff, with our cloaks for our pillows, listening to the roar of our artillery; until it mingled with my dreams.

We were on horse an hour before daybreak, and the cannonade still continued heavy.  It was actively returned, and the ramparts were a circuit of fire.  As a spectacle, nothing could be more vivid, striking, and full of interest.  To wait for the slow approaches of a formal siege was out of the question.  Intelligence had reached us that the scattered French armies, having now ascertained the point at which the burst over the frontier was to be made, had been suddenly combined, and had taken a strong position directly in our way to the capital.  A protracted siege would raise the country in our rear, and, thus placed between two fires, the grand army might find itself paralysed at the first step of the campaign.  The place must be battered until a breach was made, and stormed a la Turque.  Our anxiety during the day was indescribable.  With our telescopes constantly in our hands, we watched the effect of every new discharge; we galloped from hill to hill with the impatience of men in actual combat, and every eye and tongue was busy in calculating the distances, the power of guns, and the time which the crumbling works would take