Page:A French Volunteer of the War of Independence.djvu/179

Rh unsolved, or further than ever from a solution. I wish to narrate here only personal events and circumstances—memories teeming with observations that may be useful to others beside myself.

My brother and I emigrated, being both persuaded,—as were all the emigres who formed the Prince's army—that we might inscribe on our banners, "Veni, vidi, vici," and we entered Champagne in 1792 with the King of Prussia.

Verdun was captured 3rd September, and the next day the army could and should have arrived at Chalons, which is only thirty leagues from Paris, where King Louis XVI and his family were then prisoners in the Temple. The French army, inferior to us in numbers, covered an immensely long line, and would not have been able to stop the eighty thousand men commanded by the Duke of Brunswick, from reaching Paris. But not a day should have been lost, and we lost whole weeks. The war of 1792 was but a war of Cabinet intrigues, fallacious negotiations, false calculations, in which each of the