Berthier, who afterwards became Napoleon’s right hand, was then the head of Luckner’s staff.  The old general seized, with warlike instinct, on Dumouriez’s bold plan.  He had entered at the head of 22,000 men on the Austrian territory at Courtray and Menin.  Biron and Valence, his two seconds in command, entreated him to remain there, and Dumouriez, in his letters, urged him in similar manner.  On arriving at Lille, Dumouriez learnt that Luckner had suddenly retreated on Valenciennes, after having burnt the suburbs of Courtray; thus giving, on our frontier, the signal of hesitation and retreat.

The Belgian population, their impulses thus checked by the disasters or timidity of France, lost all hope, and bent beneath the Austrian yoke.  General Montesquiou collected the army of the south with difficulty.  The king of the Sardinians concentrated a large force on the Var.  The advanced guard of La Fayette, posted at Gliswel, at a league from Maubeuge, was beaten by the Duke of Saxe-Teschen, at the head of 12,000 men.  The great invasion of the Duke of Brunswick, in Champagne, was preparing.  The emigration took off the officers, desertion diminished our soldiery.  The clubs disseminated distrust against the commanders of our strong places.

The Girondists were urging on rebellion, the Jacobins were exciting the army to anarchy, the volunteers did not rise, the ministry was null, the Austrian committee of the Tuileries corresponded with various powers, not to deceive the nation, but to save the lives of the king and his family.  A suspected government, hostile assembly, seditious clubs, a national guard intimidated and deprived of its chief, incendiary journalism, dark conspiracies, factious municipality, a conspirator-mayor, people distrustful and starving, Robespierre and Brissot, Vergniaud and Danton, Girondists and Jacobins, face to face, having the same spoil to contend for—­the monarchy, and struggling for pre-eminence in demagogism in order to acquire the favour of the people; such was the state of France, within and without, at the moment when exterior war was pressing France on all sides, and causing it to burst forth with disasters and crimes.  The Girondists and Jacobins united for a moment, suspended their personal animosity, as if to see which could best destroy the powerless constitution which separated them.  The bourgeoisie personified by the Feuillants, the National Guard, and La Fayette, alone remained attached to the constitution.  The Gironde, from the tribune itself, made that appeal to the people against the king which it was subsequently doomed to make in vain in favour of the king against the Jacobins.  In order to control the city, Brissot, Roland, Petion, excited the suburbs, those capitals of miseries and seditions.  Every time that a people which has long crouched in slavery and ignorance is moved to its lowest depths, then appear monsters and heroes, prodigies of crime and prodigies of virtue; such were about to appear under the conspiring hand of the Girondists and demagogues.