come so considerable that he rose by seniority
to the rank of lieutenant-general. Thereafter, he believed his hour
had come, and threw himself boldly into the political arena. The
Gironde and the Jacobins were the two powers then in vogue; he
flattered both the Jacobins and the Gironde. Brissot was the corypheus
of the diplomatic committee and the chief of the war party. He became
the familiar of Brissot. Already, in 1791, he had prepared a memoir on
the subject of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which he dedicated and
read to the Jacobins. In it he announced (singular prediction for the
future minister of a king!) that before fifty years had passed, Europe
would be republican. He demanded an immediate and radical change in
the diplomatic personnel. "It is of small importance," said he in the
same memoir, "that our representatives would lack experience. In the
first place, our interests are greatly simplified; moreover, our former
representatives were young men belonging to the court who had had no
political education. In a word, it is the majesty of the nation which
gives our negotiations weight. The minister," he added, "should be a
man of approved patriotism, above all suspicion, like the wife of
Caesar. Absolute integrity, great knowledge of men, great firmness, a
broad and upright mind, should complete his character." Dumouriez
perhaps imagined that all these qualities {100} of an ideal minister
were reunited in his person. However that may be, he accepted, without
any mistrust of his own abilities, the portfolio of Foreign Affairs,
confided to him March 15, 1792, on account of his relations with the
Gironde and his popularity with the Jacobins. He had a high opinion of
himself, and, even after his cruel disappointments, he was to write in
his Memoirs, in 1794: "Dumouriez sometimes laughs sardonically in his
retreat over the judgments passed upon him. When he arrived at the
ministry, the courtiers said and published that he was only a soldier
of fortune, incapable of conducting political affairs, in which he
would make nothing but blunders. When he commanded an army, they told
the Prussians and the German Emperor's troops that he was a mere
writer, who had never made war and understood nothing about it. Since
he retired with reputation from public employments, they have published
that up to the date of the Revolution he had been an intriguing
adventurer, a ministerial spy, an office-sweeper. Would