The Duc de Lauzun commanded under La Fayette, and was called general Biron.  He was a man of the court, who had gone over in all sincerity to the side of the people.  Young, handsome, chivalrous, with that intrepid gaiety which plays with death, he carried aristocratic honour into republican ranks.  Loved by the soldiers, adored by the women, at his ease in camps, a roue in courts, he was of that school of sparkling vices of which the Marshal de Richelieu had been the type in France.  It was said that the queen herself had been enamoured of him, without being able to fix his inconstancy.  Friend of the Duc d’Orleans, companion of his debaucheries, still he had never conspired with him.  All treachery was abhorrent to him, all baseness of heart roused his utmost indignation.  He adopted the Revolution as a noble idea, of which he was always ready to be the soldier, but never the accomplice.  He did not betray the king, and always preserved a deep feeling of pity and sympathy for the queen; with an intense love for philosophy and liberty, instead of fomenting them by sedition, he defended them by war.  He changed devotion to kings into devotion to his country.  This noble cause, and the sorrows of the Revolution gave to his character a more manly stamp, and made him fight and die with the conscience of a hero.

He was encamped at Quievrain with 10,000 men, and advanced against the Austrian general Beaulieu, who occupied the heights of Mons, with a very weak army.  Two regiments of dragoons, who formed Biron’s advanced guard, were seized with a sudden panic on beholding Beaulieu’s troops.  The soldiers cried out treachery, and in vain did their officers attempt to rally them; they turned bridle and scattered disorder and fear throughout the ranks.  The army gave way and mechanically followed the current of flight.  Biron and his aides-de-camp threw themselves into the centre of the troops to stay and to rally them.  They struck at them with their swords, and fired at them.  The camp of Quievrain, the military chest, the carriage of Biron himself, were plundered by the fugitives.

Whilst this defeat, without a battle, humiliated the French army, in its first step, at Quievrain, bloody assassinations stained our flag at Lille.  General Dillon had left that city, the enemy showed itself on the plain to the number of nine hundred men.  At its appearance only, the French cavalry uttered treacherous cries, and passing by the infantry, fled to Lille, without being followed, abandoning its artillery, carriages, and baggage.  Dillon, hurried along by his squadrons to Lille, was there massacred by his own soldiers.  His colonel of engineers, Berthois, fell beside his general, beneath the bayonets of the cowards who abandoned him.  The dead bodies of these two victims of fear were hung up in the Place d’Armes, and then delivered up by the malcontents to the insults of the populace of Lille, who dragged their mutilated carcases along the streets.  Thus commenced in shame and crime those wars of the Revolution which were destined to produce, during twenty years, so much heroism, and so much military virtue.  Anarchy had penetrated to the camps, honour was there no longer:  order and honour are the two necessities of an army.  In anarchy there is still a nation—­without discipline there is no longer an army.