Page:15 decisive battles of the world Vol 2 (London).djvu/291

Rh by the victorious Germans, and to lose all chance of ever rallying his dispirited troops, be resolved to cling to the difficult country in which the armies still were grouped, to force a junction with Kellerman, and so to place himself at the bead of a force which the invaders would not dare to disregard, and by which he might drag them back from the advance on Paris, which he had not been able to bar. Accordingly, by a rapid movement to the south, during which, in his own words, "France was within a hair's-breadth of destruction," and after with difficulty checking several panics of his troops, in which they ran by thousands at the sight of a few Prussian hussars, Dumouriez succeeded in establishing his headquarters in a strong position at St. Menehould, protected by the marshes and shallows of the rivers Aisne and Aube, beyond which, to the north-west, rose a firm and elevated plateau, called Dampierre's camp, admirably situated for commanding the road by Chalons to Paris, and where he intended to post Kellerman's army so soon as it came up.