If the old politic and military ideas had governed, the advanced guard would have been formed of those who best knew the country and had some interest in it, supported by some of the best light troops and light artillery, whilst the grand solid body of an army disciplined to perfection proceeded leisurely, and in close connection with all its stores, provisions, and heavy cannon, to support the expedite body in case of misadventure, or to improve and complete its success.

The direct contrary of all this was put in practice.  In consequence of the original sin of this project, the army of the French princes was everywhere thrown into the rear, and no part of it brought forward to the last moment, the time of the commencement of the secret negotiation.  This naturally made an ill impression on the people, and furnished an occasion for the rebels at Paris to give out that the faithful subjects of the king were distrusted, despised, and abhorred by his allies.  The march was directed through a skirt of Lorraine, and thence into a part of Champagne, the Duke of Brunswick leaving all the strongest places behind him,—­leaving also behind him the strength of his artillery,—­and by this means giving a superiority to the French, in the only way in which the present France is able to oppose a German force.

In consequence of the adoption of those false politics, which turned everything on the king’s sole and single person, the whole plan of the war was reduced to nothing but a coup de main, in order to set that prince at liberty.  If that failed, everything was to be given up.

The scheme of a coup de main might (under favorable circumstances) be very fit for a partisan at the head of a light corps, by whose failure nothing material would be deranged.  But for a royal army of eighty thousand men, headed by a king in person, who was to march an hundred and fifty miles through an enemy’s country,—­surely, this was a plan unheard of.

Although this plan was not well chosen, and proceeded upon principles altogether ill-judged and impolitic, the superiority of the military force might in a great degree have supplied the defects, and furnished a corrective to the mistakes.  The greater probability was, that the Duke of Brunswick would make his way to Paris over the bellies of the rabble of drunkards, robbers, assassins, rioters, mutineers, and half-grown boys, under the ill-obeyed command of a theatrical, vaporing, reduced captain of cavalry, who opposed that great commander and great army.  But—­Diis aliter visum.  He began to treat,—­the winds blew and the rains beat,—­the house fell, because it was built upon sand,—­and great was the fall thereof.  This march was not an exact copy of either of the two marches made by the Duke of Parma into France.