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Rh sabre, or the first sound of Austrian gun, was enough to discomfit the French. Their first corps, four thousand strong, that advanced from Lille across the frontier, came suddenly upon a far inferior detachment of the Austrian garrison of Tournay. Not a shot was fired, not a bayonet leveled. With one simultaneous cry of panic, the French broke and ran headlong back to Lille, where they completed the specimen of insubordination which they had given in the field by murdering their general and several of their chief officers. On the same day, another division under Biron, mustering ten thousand sabres and bayonets, saw a few Austrian skirmishers reconnoitering their position. The French advanced posts had scarcely given and received a volley, and only a few balls from the enemy's field-pieces had fallen among the lines, when two regiments of French dragoons raised the cry, "We are betrayed," galloped off, and were followed in disgraceful rout by the rest of the whole army. Similar panics, or repulses almost equally discreditable, occurred whenever Rochambeau, or Luckner, or La Fayette, the earliest French generals in the war, brought their troops into the presence of the enemy.

Meanwhile, the allied sovereigns had gradually collected on the Rhine a veteran and finely-disciplined army for the invasion of France, which for numbers, equipment, and martial renown, both of generals and men, was equal to any that Germany had ever sent forth to conquer. Their design was to strike boldly and decisively at the heart of France, and, penetrating the country through the Ardennes, to proceed by Châlons upon Paris. The obstacles that lay in their way seemed insignificant. The disorder and imbecility of the French armies had been even augmented by the forced flight of La Fayette and a sudden change of generals. The only troops posted on or near the track by which the allies were about to advance were the 23,000 men at Sedan, whom La Fayette had commanded, and a corps of 20,000 near Metz, the command of which had just been transferred from Luckner to Kellerman. There were only three fortresses which it was necessary for the allies to capture or maskSedan, Longwy, and Verdun. The defenses and stores of these three were known to be wretchedly dismantled and insufficient; and when once these feeble barriers were overcome, and Châlons reached, a fertile and unprotected country seemed to invite the