Chapter 3.4.V.

Sword of Sharpness.

In fact it is something quite other than paper theorems, it is iron and
audacity that France now needs.

Is not La Vendee still blazing;--alas too literally; rogue Rossignol
burning the very corn-mills? General Santerre could do nothing there;
General Rossignol, in blind fury, often in liquor, can do less than
nothing. Rebellion spreads, grows ever madder. Happily those lean
Quixote-figures, whom we saw retreating out of Mentz, 'bound not to
serve against the Coalition for a year,' have got to Paris. National
Convention packs them into post-vehicles and conveyances; sends them
swiftly, by post, into La Vendee! There valiantly struggling, in obscure
battle and skirmish, under rogue Rossignol, let them, unlaurelled, save
the Republic, and 'be cut down gradually to the last man.' (Deux Amis,
xi. 147; xiii. 160-92, &c.)

Does not the Coalition, like a fire-tide, pour in; Prussia through the
opened North-East; Austria, England through the North-West? General
Houchard prospers no better there than General Custine did: let him look
to it! Through the Eastern and the Western Pyrenees Spain has deployed
itself; spreads, rustling with Bourbon banners, over the face of the
South. Ashes and embers of confused Girondin civil war covered that
region already. Marseilles is damped down, not quenched; to be quenched
in blood. Toulon, terrorstruck, too far gone for turning, has flung
itself, ye righteous Powers,--into the hands of the English! On Toulon
Arsenal there flies a Flag,--nay not even the Fleur-de-lys of a Louis
Pretender; there flies that accursed St. George's Cross of the English
and Admiral Hood! What remnants of sea-craft, arsenals, roperies,
war-navy France had, has given itself to these enemies of human nature,
'ennemis du genre humain.' Beleaguer it, bombard it, ye Commissioners
Barras, Freron, Robespierre Junior; thou General Cartaux, General
Dugommier; above all, thou remarkable Artillery-Major, Napoleon
Buonaparte! Hood is fortifying himself, victualling himself; means,
apparently, to make a new Gibraltar of it.

But lo, in the Autumn night, late night, among the last of August, what
sudden red sunblaze is this that has risen over Lyons City; with a noise
to deafen the world? It is the Powder-tower of Lyons, nay the Arsenal
with four Powder-towers, which has caught fire in the Bombardment; and
sprung into the air, carrying 'a hundred and seventeen houses' after it.
Wi