ll, but by
pen and ink; and the consequence of our "march to Paris" is, that one
half of the army is now scattered from Holland to the Rhine, and the
other half is, like myself, within French walls."

I enquired how Clairfait bore his change of fortune.

"Like a man superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higher
ability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become a
magnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could not
fight without troops: and such was our exact condition.

"Dumourier, at the head of a hundred thousand men, had turned short
from the Prussian retreat, and flung himself upon the Netherlands.
How many troops do you think the wisdom of the Aulic Council had
provided to protect the provinces? Scarcely more than a third of the
number, and those scattered over a frontier of a hundred miles; in a
country, too, where every Man spoke French, where every man was half
Republican already, where the people had actually begun a revolution,
and where we had scarcely a friend, a fortress in repair, or
ammunition enough for _feu de joie_. The French, of course, burst in
like an inundation, sweeping every thing before them. I was at dinner
with Clairfait and his staff on the day when the intelligence
arrived. The map was laid upon the table, and we had a kind of debate
on the course which the Frenchman would take. That evening completed
my opinion of him as a general. He took the clearest view among all
our conjectures, as the event proved, so far as the enemy's movements
were concerned; though I still retain my own idea of an original
error in the choice of our field of battle. Before the twilight fell,
we mounted our horses, and rode to the spot where Clairfait had
already made up his mind to meet the French. It was certainly a
capital position for defence--a range of heights not too high for
guns, surmounted by a central plateau; the very position for a
battery and a brigade; but the very worst that could be taken against
the new enemy whom we had to oppose."

"Yet, what could an army of French recruits be expected to do against
a disciplined force so strongly posted?" was my question.

"My answer to that point," said Varnhorst, "must be a quotation from
my old master of tactics. If the purpose of a general is simply to
defend himself, let him keep his troops on heights; if his purpose is
simply to make an artillery fight, let him keep behind his guns; but
if it is his purpose to b