z for the moment checked him by a skillful disposition of his
superior artillery. But if the superbly drilled Prussian infantry were
sent forward it seemed as though the result could not be long in doubt.
{158} Brunswick methodically and slowly made his preparations for the
attack, but just at the moment when it should have been delivered,
Dumouriez, divining his opponent's hesitation, imposed on him. Riding
along the French front with his staff he placed his hat on the point of
his sword and rode forward, singing the Marseillaise. His whole army
catching the refrain advanced towards the enemy; and Brunswick at once
took up a defensive attitude, which he maintained till the close of the
battle. The unsteady battalions and half-drilled volunteers of
Dumouriez had suddenly revealed the fact that they were a national
army, and that they possessed the most formidable of military weapons,
patriotism. That was an innovation in 18th-century warfare, an
innovation that was to result in some notable triumphs. At Valmy it
led to the Prussians retiring from a battle field on which they had
left only a few score of dead. Soon afterwards Brunswick began a
retreat that was to lead him back to the Rhine.

On the day after Valmy, the Convention assembled. The extreme
Jacobins, soon to be known from their seats in the assembly as the
Mountain, numbered about fifty. Danton and {159} Robespierre were the
two most conspicuous; among their immediate supporters not hitherto
mentioned may be noted Carnot, Fouche, Tallien, and St. Just. A much
larger group, of which the moderate Jacobins formed the backbone, were
inclined to look to Brissot for leadership and are generally described
as Girondins. This name came from the small group of the deputies of
the Gironde, that represented perhaps better than any other, the best
force of provincial liberalism but at the same time a revolt against
terrorism, massacre and the supremacy of Paris. Within the last sixty
years, however, the term Girondin has come into use as a label for all
those positive political elements in the Convention that attempted a
struggle against the Mountain for leadership and against Paris for
moderate and national government. Among the Girondins may be noted
Brissot, Vergniaud, Condorcet; and the Anglo-American veteran of
republicanism, Tom Paine. Between the Mountain and the Gironde sat the
Plaine, or the Marais, as it was called, that non-committal section of
th