is Austrian army against which his troops contended
might yet be his last resource. He could not even flatter himself that
the sacrifice he had made of his sympathies and family feelings would
be repaid by the love and confidence of his people.

"We have no difficulty nowadays in comprehending," says M. Geffroy very
justly, "what pure patriotism there was in that young army of 1792,
which represented new France. But this army, formed in independence of
the old regiments, was none the less, in the eyes of the Queen, a
veritable army of sedition. She thought of it as composed of the
victors of the Bastille, those whom Mirabeau styled the greatest
scoundrels of Paris; the very rabble who came to Versailles on the 6th
of October. She believed they could be crushed by the first attack at
the frontier, and that France and Paris would be rid of them." The
following reflection by M. Geffroy is very judicious: "Marie Antoinette
committed a double error, but honest men who had not the same {133}
overpowering motives as she, have committed it likewise. I do not
allude merely to those Frenchmen who, after April 20, remained in the
ranks of the Emigration, and who, apparently, did not suppose
themselves to be betraying the true interests of their country. But
look at M. de Bouille. He even accepted a command in the foreign army
under Gustavus III. And yet M. de Bouille is an honest man who knows
France and loves her ardently. Observe, in his Memoirs, his
involuntary pride in our success, and how he shrugs his shoulders at
the bluster of the Prussian officers."

It is not yet well understood what vigor, enthusiasm, and martial ardor
animated that brave national army, which, according to the foreigners,
was but a band of rioters, but which was suddenly to appear on the
battle-field as a people of heroes. Honor took refuge in the camps.
It was there that men whom the Jacobin Club enraged, and who had no
consolation for their patriotic grief but the virile emotions of
combat, went to fight and die. Why did not Louis XVI. call to mind
that he was the commander-in-chief of the army? Ah! had he been a
soldier, had he been accustomed to wear a uniform, to command, and,
above all, to speak to his troops, how quickly he would have come to
the end of his difficulties! Count de Vaublanc had good reason to say:
"Anything can be done with Frenchmen if one knows how to animate and
impress them with vehement ardor; otherwise, nothing