History of the Girondists Part 27

Brissot in this gave evidence of the patience of consummate ambition. He inspired Vergniaud, Petion, Guadet, Gensonne, as well as all the leading men of his party, with similar patience. He remained with them in the twilight close to power, but not included in the projected ministry, being desirous of feeling the pulse of popular opinion through secondary men, who could be disavowed or sacrificed at need, and keeping in reserve himself and the leaders of the Girondists, either to support or overthrow this weak and transitory ministry, if the nation should resolve upon more decisive measures. Brissot, and those who acted with him, were thus ready at all points, as well to direct as to replace power--they were masters without any responsibility. The doctrines of Machiavel were very perceptible in this tactic of statesmen. Besides, by abstaining from entering into the first cabinet, they would remain popular, and maintain, in the a.s.sembly and Jacobins, those voices of power which would have been stifled in an administration. Popularity was requisite for their contest with Robespierre, who was treading so closely on their heels, and who would soon be at the head of opinion if they abandoned it to him. On entering upon their course they affected for this rival more contempt than they really felt. Robespierre, single-handed, balanced their influence with the Jacobins. The vociferations of Billaud, Varennes, Danton, Collot d'Herbois, did not in the least alarm them. Robespierre's silence gave them considerable uneasiness. They had been successful in the question of war; but the stoical opposition of Robespierre, and the desire of the people for war, had not affected his reputation. This man had redoubled his power in his isolation. The inspiration of a mind alone and incorruptible was more powerful than the enthusiasm of a whole party. Those who did not approve, still admired him. He had stood aside to allow war to pa.s.s by him, but opinion always had its eyes on him, and it might have been said that a secret instinct revealed to the people that in this man was the destiny of the future. When he advanced, they followed him; when he did not move, they waited for him. The Girondists, therefore, were compelled, from prudential motives, to distrust this man, and to remain in the a.s.sembly between their own course and him. These precautions taken, they looked about them for the men who were nullities by themselves, and yet, engrafted on their party, of whom they could make ministers. They required instruments, and not masters,--Seids attached to their fortune, whom they could direct at will either against the king or against the Jacobins--could elevate without fear, or reject without compunction. They sought them in obscurity, and believed they had found them in Claviere, Roland, Dumouriez, Lacoste, and Duranton,--they made only one mistake: Dumouriez, under the guise of an adventurer, had talents equal to any emergency.[18]

X.

The party thus distributed, and Madame Roland informed of the proposed elevation of her husband, the Girondists attacked the ministry in the person of M. de Lessart, at the sitting of the 10th of March. Brissot read against this minister a bill of accusation, skilfully and perfidiously fabricated, in which the appearance presented by facts and the conjecture derived from proofs, cast on the negotiation of M. de Lessart all the odium and criminality of treason. He proposed that a decree of accusation should proceed against the minister for foreign affairs. The a.s.sembly was silent or applauded. Some members, with a view of defending the minister, demanded time in order that the a.s.sembly might reflect on the charge, and thus, at least, affect the impartiality of justice. "Hasten!" exclaimed Isnard; "whilst you are deliberating perhaps the traitor will flee." "I have been a long time judge," replied Boulanger, "and never did I decree capital punishment so lightly."

Vergniaud, who saw the indecision of the a.s.sembly, rushed twice into the tribune to combat the excuses and the delays of the right side. Becquet, whose coolness was equal to his courage, desirous of averting the peril, proposed that it should be sent to the diplomatic committee. Vergniaud began to fear that the moment would escape his party, and said, "No, no we do not require actual proofs for a criminal accusation--presumptive proofs are sufficient. There is not one of us in whose minds the cowardice and perfidy which characterises the acts of the minister have not produced the most lively indignation. Is it not he who has for two months kept in his portfolio the decree of the reunion of Avignon with France? and the blood spilled in that city, the mutilated carcases of so many victims, do they not cry to us for vengeance against him? I see from this tribune the palace in which evil counsellors deceive the king whom the const.i.tution gives to us, forge the fetters which enchain us, and plot the stratagems which are to deliver us to the house of Austria.

(Loud acclamations.) The day has arrived to put an end to such audacity and insolence, and to crush such conspirators. Dread and terror have frequently, in the ancient times, come forth from this palace in the name of despotism: let them return thither to-day in the name of the law (loud applauses); let them penetrate all hearts; let all those who inhabit it know that the const.i.tution promises inviolability to the king alone; let them learn that the law will reach all the guilty, and that not one head convicted of criminality can escape its sword."

These allusions to the queen, who was accused of directing the Austrian committee, this threatening language, addressed to the king, went echoing into the king's cabinet, and forced his hand to sign the nomination of a Girondist ministry. This was a party manoeuvre, executed beneath the appearance of sudden indignation in the tribune--it was more, it was the first signal made by the Girondists to the men of the 20th of June and the 10th of August. The act of accusation was carried, and De Lessart sent to the court of Orleans, which only yielded him up to the cut-throats of Versailles. He might have fled, but his flight would have been interpreted against the king. He placed himself generously between death and his master, innocent of every crime except his love for him.

The king felt that there was but one step between himself and abdication: that was, by taking his ministry from amongst his enemies, and giving them an interest in power, by placing it in their hands. He yielded to the times, embraced his minister, and requested the Girondists to supply him with another. The Girondists were already silently occupied in so doing. They had previously made, in the name of the party, overtures to Roland at the end of February. "The court," they said to him, "is not very far off from taking Jacobin ministers: not from inclination, but through treachery. The confidence it will feign to bestow will be a snare. It requires violent men in order to impute to them the excesses of the people and the disorders of the kingdom: we must deceive its perfidious hopes, and give to it firm and sagacious patriots. We think of you."

XI.

Roland, whose ambition had soured in obscurity, had smiled at the power which came to avenge his old age. Brissot, himself, had gone to Madame Roland on the 21st of the same month, and repeating the same words, had requested from her the formal consent of her husband. Madame Roland was ambitious, not of power but of fame. Fame lightens up the higher places only, and she ardently desired to see her husband elevated to this eminence. She spoke like a woman who had predicted the event, and whom fortune does not surprise. "The burden is heavy," she said to Brissot, "but Roland has a great consciousness of his own powers, and would derive fresh strength from the feeling of being useful to liberty and his country."

This choice being made, the Girondists cast their eyes on Lacoste, an active commissioner of the navy, a working man, his mind limited by his duties, but honest and upright; his very candour of nature preserving him from faction. Put into council to watch over his master, he naturally became his friend. Duranton, an advocate of Bordeaux, was called to the bureau of justice. The Girondists, who knew him, boasted of his honesty, and relied on his plasticity and weakness. Brissot intended for the finance department Claviere, a Genevese economist, driven from his native land, a relation and friend of his own; used to intrigue; rival of Necker; brought up in the cabinet of Mirabeau, in order to bring forward a rival against this finance minister, so hateful to Mirabeau: a man without republican prejudices or monarchical principles, only seeking in the Revolution a part, and with whom the great aim and end was--to get on. His mind, indifferent to all scruples, was on a level with every situation, and at the height of all parties.

The Girondists, new to state affairs, required men well conversant in the details of war and finance departments, and who yet were the mere tools of their government: Claviere was one of these. In the war office they had De Grave, by whom the king had replaced Narbonne. De Grave, who from the subaltern ranks of the army had been raised to the post of minister of war, had declared relations with the Girondists. The friends of Gensonne, Vergniaud, Guadet, Brissot, and even Danton, hoped, through their instrumentality, to save at the same time the const.i.tution and the king. Devoted to both, he was the link by which he hoped to unite the Girondists to royalty. Young, he had the illusions of his age: const.i.tutional, he had the sincerity of his conviction; but weak, in ill health, more ready to undertake than firm to execute, he was one of those men of the moment who help events to their accomplishment, and do not disturb them when they are accomplished.

The princ.i.p.al minister, however, he to whose hands was to be confided the fate of his country, and who was to comprise in himself all the policy of the Girondists, was the minister for foreign affairs, destined to replace the unfortunate De Lessart. The rupture with Europe was the most pressing matter with the party, and they required a man who would control the king, detect the secret intrigues of the court, cognisant of the mysteries of European cabinets, and who knew how, by his skill and resolution, at the same time to force our enemies into a war,--our dubious friends into neutrality,--our secret partisans to an alliance.

They sought such a man: he was close at hand.

BOOK XIII.

I.

Dumouriez combined all the requisites of boldness, devotion to the cause, and talent that the Girondists required, and yet, until then, a second-rate man, and almost unknown, had no fortune to hope for but as theirs culminated. His name would not give umbrage to their genius, and if he proved incompetent, or rebelled against their projects, they would remove him without fear, or crush him without pity. Brissot, the diplomatic oracle of the Gironde, was evidently to be the minister who was one day to control our foreign relations, and who _en attendant_ was to govern for the moment under the name of Dumouriez.

The Girondists had discovered Dumouriez in the obscurity of an existence, until then very insignificant, through Gensonne, whose colleague Dumouriez had been in the mission which the Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly had given him to visit and examine the position of the western departments, already agitated by the secret presentiment of civil war and the early religious troubles. During this inquiry, which lasted several months, the two commissioners had frequent opportunities for an interchange of their most private thoughts on the great events which at this moment agitated men's minds. They became much attached to each other. Gensonne detected with much tact in his colleague one of those intellects repressed by circ.u.mstances, and weighed down by the obscurity of their lot, which it is enough to expose to the open daylight of public action, in order to s.h.i.+ne forth with all the brilliancy with which nature and study had endowed it: he had too found in this mind the spring of character strong enough to bear the movements of a revolution, and sufficiently elastic to bend to all the difficulties of affairs. In a word, Dumouriez had on the first contact exercised over Gensonne that influence, that ascendency, that empire which superiority, when it displays and humbles itself, never fails to acquire over minds to which it condescends to disclose itself.

This attractive power, the confidence of genius, was one of the characteristics of Dumouriez, and by that he subsequently made a conquest of the Girondists, the king, the queen, his army, the Jacobins, Danton,--Robespierre himself. It was what great men call their star,--a star which precedes them, and prepares their way. Dumouriez's star was fascination of manner; but this fascination was but the attraction of his just, rapid, quick ideas, into whose orbit the incredible activity of his mind carried away the mind of those who heard his thoughts or witnessed his actions. Gensonne, on his return from his mission, had desired to enrich his party with this unknown man, whose eminence he foresaw from afar. He presented Dumouriez to his friends of the a.s.sembly, to Guadet, Vergniaud, Roland, Brissot, and De Grave: communicated to them his own astonishment at, and confidence in, the twofold faculties of Dumouriez as diplomatist and soldier. He spoke of him as of a concealed saviour, whom fate had reserved for liberty. He conjured them to attach to themselves a man whose greatness would enhance their own.

They had scarcely seen Dumouriez before they were convinced. His intellect was electrical: it struck before they had time to anatomise it. The Girondists presented him to De Grave, and De Grave to the king, who offered him the temporary management of foreign affairs, until M. de Lessart, sent before the _Haute Cour_, had proved his innocence to his judges, and could resume the place reserved for him in the council.

Dumouriez refused the post of minister _pro tempore_, which would injure and weaken his position before all parties by rendering him suspected by all. The king yielded, and Dumouriez was appointed.

II.

History should pause a moment before this man, who, without having a.s.sumed the name of Dictator, concentrated in himself during two years all expiring France, and exercised over his country the most incontestible of dictators.h.i.+ps--that of genius. Dumouriez was of the number of men who are not to be painted by merely naming them, but of those whose previous life explains their nature; who have in the past the secret of their future; who have, like Mirabeau, their existence spread over two epochs; who have their roots in two soils, and are only known by the perusal of every detail.

Dumouriez, son of a commissioner in the war department, was born at Cambrai in 1739; and although his family lived in the north, his blood was southern by extraction. His family, originally from Aix, in Provence, evinced itself in the light, warmth, and sensibility of his nature; there was perceptible the same sky that had rendered so prolific the genius of Mirabeau. His father, a military and well-read man, educated him equally for war and literature. One of his uncles, employed in the foreign office, made him early a diplomatist. A mind equally powerful and supple, he lent himself equally to all--as fitted for action as for thought, he pa.s.sed from one to the other with facility, according to the phases of his destiny. There was in him the flexibility of the Greek mind in the stirring periods of the democracy in Athens.

His deep study early directed his mind to history, that poem of men of action. Plutarch nourished him with his manly diet. He moulded on the antique figures drawn from life by the historian the ideal of his own life, only all the parts of every great man suited him alike: he a.s.sumed them by turns, realised them in his reveries, as suited to reproduce In him the voluptuary as the sage, the malcontent as the patriot; Aristippus as Themistocles; Scipio as Coriola.n.u.s. He mingled with his studies the exercises of a military life, formed his body to fatigue, at the same time that he fas.h.i.+oned his mind to lofty ideas; equally skilled in handling a sword and daring in subduing a horse.

Demosthenes, by patience, formed a sonorous voice from a stammering tongue. Dumouriez, with a weak and ailing const.i.tution in his childhood, enured his body for war. The stirring ambition of his soul required that the frame which encased it should be of endurance.

III.

Opposing the desires of his father, who destined him for the war office, the pen was his abhorrence, and he obtained a sub-lieutenancy in the cavalry. As aide-de-camp of marshal d'Armentieres, he made the campaign of Hanover. In a retreat he seized the standard from the hands of a fugitive, rallied two hundred troopers round him, saved a battery of five pieces of cannon, and covered the pa.s.sage of the army. Remaining almost alone in the rear, he made himself a rampart of his dead horse, and wounded three of the enemy's hussars. Wounded in many places by gun-shot and sabre wounds--his thigh entangled beneath a fallen horse--two fingers of his right hand severed--his forehead cut open--his eyes literally singed by a discharge of powder, he still fought, and only surrendered prisoner to the Baron de Beker, who saved his life, and conveyed him to the camp of the English.

His youth and good const.i.tution restored him to health at the end of two months. Destined to form himself to victory by the example of defeats, and want of experience in our generals, he rejoined marshal de Soubise and marshal de Broglie; and was present at the routs which the French owe to their enmity and rivalry.

At the peace he went to rejoin his regiment in garrison at Saint Lo.

Pa.s.sing by Pont Audemer, he stopped at the house of his father's sister.

A pa.s.sionate love for one of his uncle's daughters kept him there. This love, shared by his cousin, and favoured by his aunt, was opposed by his father. The young girl, in despair, took refuge in a convent. Dumouriez swore to take her thence, and went away. On his road, overcome by his grief, he bought some opium at Dieppe, shut himself up in his apartment, wrote his adieus to his beloved, a letter of reproaches to his father, and took the poison. Nature saved him, and repentance ensued--he went, and, throwing himself at his father's feet, they were reconciled.

At four and twenty years of age, after seven campaigns, he brought from the wars only twenty-two wounds, a decoration, the rank of captain, a pension of 600 livres, debts contracted in the service, and a hopeless love, which preyed upon his mind. His ambition, spurred by his love, made him seek in politics that success which war had hitherto refused him.

There was then in Paris one of those enigmatic men who are at the same time intriguers and statesmen. Unknown and unconsidered, they play under some name parts hidden, but important in affairs. Men of police, as well as of politics, the governments that employ and despise them pay their services, not in appointments, but in subsidies. Manoeuvrers in politics, they are paid from day to day--they are urged onwards, compromised, and then disavowed, and sometimes even imprisoned. They suffer all, even captivity and dishonour, for money. Such men are things to buy and sell, and their talent and utility stamp their price. Of this cla.s.s were Linguet, Brissot, even Mirabeau in his youth. Such at this period was one Favier.

This man, employed in turns by the duc de Choiseul and M. d'Argenson, to draw up diplomatic memoranda, had an infinite knowledge of Europe; he was the vigilant spy of every cabinet, knew their back-games, guessed their intrigues, and kept them in play by counter-mines, of which the minister for foreign affairs did not always know the secret. Louis XV., a king of small ideas and petty resources, was not ashamed to take into his confidence Favier, as an instrument in the schemes he contemplated against his own ministers. Favier was the go-between in the political correspondence which this monarch kept up with the count de Broglie, unknown to, and against the policy of, his own ministers. This confidence, suspected by, rather than known to, his ministers, talent as a very able writer, deep knowledge of national eras, of history, and diplomacy, gave Favier a credit with the administration, and an influence over affairs very much beyond his obscure position and dubious character; he was, in some sort, the minister of the intrigues of high life of his time.

IV.

Dumouriez seeing the high roads to fortune closed before him, resolved to cast himself into them by indirect ways; and with this view attached himself to Favier. Favier attached himself to him, and in this connection of his earlier years, Dumouriez acquired that character for adventure and audacity which gave, during all his life, something skilful as intrigue and as rash as a _coup de main_ to his heroism and his policy. Favier initiated him into the secrets of courts, and engaged Louis XV. and the Duc de Choiseul to employ Dumouriez in diplomacy and war at the same time.

It was at this moment that the great Corsican patriot, Paoli, was making gigantic efforts to rescue his country from the tyranny of the republic of Genoa, and to a.s.sure to this people an independence, of which he by turns offered the patronage to England and to France. On reaching Genoa, Dumouriez undertook to deceive at the same time the Republic, England, and Paoli, united himself with Corsican adventurers, conspired against Paoli, made a descent upon the island, which he summoned to independence, and was partially successful. He threw himself into a felucca, to bring to the Duc de Choiseul information as to the new state of Corsica, and to implore the succour of France. Delayed by a tempest, tossed for several weeks on the coast of Africa, he reached Ma.r.s.eilles too late; the treaty between France and Genoa was signed. He hastened to Favier, his friend in Paris.

Favier informed him confidentially, that he was employed to draw up a memorial to prove to the king and his ministers the necessity of supporting the republic of Genoa against the independent Corsicans; that this memorial had been demanded of him secretly by the Genoese amba.s.sador, and by a _femme de chambre_ of the d.u.c.h.esse de Grammont, favourite sister of the Duc de Choiseul, interested, like the brothers of the Du Barry[19], in supplying the army: that 500 louis were the price of this memorial and the blood of the Corsicans; and he offered a portion of this intrigue and its profits to Dumouriez who pretended to accept this, and then hastening to the Duc de Choiseul, revealed the manoeuvre, was well received, believed he had convinced the minister, and was preparing to return, conveying to the Corsicans the subsidies and arms they expected. Next day, he found the minister changed, and was sent from the audience with harsh language. Dumouriez retired, and made his way unmolested to Spain. Aided by Favier, who was satisfied with having jockeyed him, and pitied his candour; a.s.sisted by the Duc de Choiseul, he conspired with the Spanish minister and French amba.s.sador to effect the conquest of Portugal, whose topography he was empowered to study in a military point of view, as well as its means of defence. The Marquis de Pombal, first minister of Portugal, conceived suspicions as to Dumouriez's mission, and forced him to leave Lisbon. The young diplomatist returned to Madrid, learned that his cousin, over-persuaded by the priests, had abandoned him, and meant to take the veil. He then attached himself to another mistress, a young Frenchwoman, daughter of an architect established at Madrid, and for some years his activity reposed in the happiness of a partic.i.p.ated love. An order of the Duc de Choiseul recalled him to Paris,--he hesitated: his beloved herself compelled him, and sacrificed him as if she had from afar antic.i.p.ated his fame. He reached Paris, and was named quartermaster-general of the French army in Corsica, where, as everywhere else, he greatly distinguished himself. At the head of a detachment of volunteers, he seized on the Chateau de Corte, the last asylum and home of Paoli. He retained for himself the library of this unfortunate patriot. The choice of these books, and the notes with which they were covered in Paoli's hand, revealed one of those characters which seek their fellows in the finest models of antiquity. Dumouriez was worthy of this spoil, since he appreciated it above gold. The great Frederic called Paoli the first captain of Europe: Voltaire declared him the conqueror and lawgiver of his country. The French blushed at conquering him--fortune at forsaking him. If he did not emanc.i.p.ate his country, he deserved that his struggle should be immortalised. Too great a citizen for so small a people, he did not bear a reputation in proportion to his country, but to his virtues. Corsica remains in the ranks of conquered provinces; but Paoli must always be in the ranks of great men.

V.

After his return to Paris, Dumouriez pa.s.sed a year in the society of the literary men and women of light fame who gave to the society of the period the spirit and the tone of a constant orgy. Forming an attachment with an old acquaintance of Madame Du Barry, he knew this _parvenue_ courtezan, whom libertinism had elevated nearly to the throne. Devoted to the Duc de Choiseul, the enemy of this mistress of the king, and retaining that remnant of virtue which amongst the French is called honour, he did not prost.i.tute his uniform to the court, and blushed to see the old monarch, at the reviews of Fontainebleau, walk on foot with his hat off before his army, beside a carriage in which this woman displayed her beauty and her empire. Madame Du Barry took offence at the forgetfulness of the young officer, and divined the cause of his absence. Dumouriez was sent to Poland on the same errand that had before despatched him to Portugal. His mission, half diplomatic, half military, was, in consequence of a secret idea of the king, approved by his confidant, the Count de Broglie, and by Favier, the count's adviser.

It was at the moment when Poland, menaced and half-occupied by the Russians, devoured by Prussia, forsaken by Austria, was attempting some ill-considered movements, in order to repair its scattered limbs, and to dispute, at least, in fragments, its nationality with its oppressors--the last sigh of liberty which moved the corpse of a people.

The king, who feared to come into collision with the Empress of Russia, Catherine, to give excuses to the hostilities of Frederic and umbrage to the court of Vienna, was still desirous of extending to expiring Poland the hand of France; but concealing that hand, and reserving to himself the power even to cut it off, if it became necessary. Dumouriez was the intermediary selected for this part; the secret minister of France, amongst the Polish confederates; a general, if necessary--but a general adventurer and disowned--to rally and direct their efforts.

The Duc de Choiseul, indignant at the debas.e.m.e.nt of France, was secretly preparing war against Prussia and England. This powerful diversion in Poland was necessary for his plan of campaign, and he gave his confidential instructions to Dumouriez; but, thrown out of the administration by the intrigues of Madame Du Barry and M. d'Argenson, the Duc de Choiseul was suddenly exiled to Versailles before Dumouriez reached Poland. The policy of France, changing with the minister, at once destroyed Dumouriez's plans. Still he followed them up with an ardour and perseverance worthy of better success. He found the Poles debased by misery, slavery, and the custom of bearing a foreign yoke. He found the Polish aristocrats corrupted by luxury, enervated by pleasures, employing in intrigues and language the warmth of their patriotism in the conferences and confederation of _Eperies_. A female of remarkable beauty, high rank, and eastern genius, the Countess of Mnizeck, stirred up, destroyed, or combined different parties, according to the taste of her ambition or her amours. Certain patriot orators caused the last accents of independence to resound again in vain.

Certain princes and gentlemen formed meetings without any understanding with each other, who contended as partisans rather than as citizens, and who boasted of personal fame, without any reference to the safety of their country. Dumouriez availed himself of the ascendency of the countess, and endeavoured to unite these isolated effects, formed an infantry, an artillery, seized upon two fortresses, threatened in all directions the Russians, scattered in small bodies over the wide plains of Poland, prepared for war, disciplined the insubordinate patriotism of the insurgents, and contended successfully against Souwarow, the Russian general, subsequently destined to threaten the republic so closely.

But Stanislaus, the king of Poland, the crowned creature of Catherine, saw the danger of a national insurrection, which, by drawing out the Russians, would endanger his throne; and he paralysed it by offering to the federates to adhere, in his own person, to the confederation. One of them, Bohuez, the last great orator of Polish liberty, returned to the king, in a sublime oration, his perfidious succour, and then combined the unanimity of the conspirators into the last resource of the oppressed--insurrection. It burst forth. Dumouriez is its life and soul, flies from one camp to the other, giving a spirit of unity to the plan of attack. Cracovis was ready to fall into his hands; the Russians regain the frontier in disorder; but anarchy, that fatal genius of Poland, suddenly dissolves the union of the chiefs, and they surrender one another to the united efforts of the Russians. All desire to have the exclusive honour of delivering their country, and prefer to lose it rather than owe their success to a rival.

Sapieha, the princ.i.p.al leader, was ma.s.sacred by his n.o.bles. Pulauwski and Micksenski were delivered up, wounded, to the Russians; Zaremba betrayed his country; Oginski, the last of these great patriots, roused Lithuania at the moment when Lesser Poland had laid down its arms.

Abandoned and fugitive, he escaped to Dantzig, and wandered for thirty years over Europe and America, carrying in his heart the memory of his country. The lovely Countess of Mnizeck languished and died of grief with Poland. Dumouriez wept for this heroine, adored in a country wherein he said the women are more men than the men. He brake his sword, despairing for ever of this aristocracy without a people, bestowing on it, as he quitted it, the name of _Asiatic Nation of Europe_.

VI.

He returned to Paris. The king and M. d'Argenson, to save appearances with Russia and Prussia, threw him and Favier into the Bastille, and he there pa.s.sed a year in cursing the ingrat.i.tude of courts and the weakness of kings, and recovered his natural energy in retreat and study. The king changed his prison into exile to the citadel of Caen; there Dumouriez found again, in a convent, the cousin he had loved.

Free, and weary of a monastic life, she became softened on again beholding her former lover, and they were married. He was then appointed commandant of Cherbourg, and his indefatigable mind contended with the elements as if it were opposing men. He conceived the plan of fortifying this harbour, which was to imprison a stormy sea in a granite basin, and give the French navy a halting place in the channel. Here he pa.s.sed fifteen years in domestic life, much troubled by the ill humour and ascetic devotion of his wife; in military studies constant, but without application, and in the dissipation of the philosophic and voluptuous society of his time.

The Revolution, which was drawing nigh, found him indifferent to its principles, and prepared for its vicissitudes. The justness of his penetration enabled him at a glance to measure the tendency of events.