diate orders of the state, by which the monarchy was upheld, were nothing. So that, if the united potentates had succeeded so far as to reestablish the authority of that king, and that he should be so illadvised as to confirm all the confiscations, and to recognize as a lawful body and to class himself with that rabble of murderers, (and there wanted not persons who would so have advised him,) there was nothing in the principle or in the proceeding of the united powers to prevent such an arrangement. An expedition to free a brother sovereign from prison was undoubtedly a generous and chivalrous undertaking. But the spirit and generosity would not have been less, if the policy had been more profound and more comprehensive, that is, if it had taken in those considerations and those persons by whom, and, in some measure, for whom, monarchy exists. This would become a bottom for a system of solid and permanent policy, and of operations conformable to that system. The same fruitful error was the cause why nothing was done to impress the people of France (so far as we can at all consider the inhabitants of France as a people) with an idea that the government was ever to be really French, or indeed anything else than the nominal government of a monarch, a monarch absolute as over them, but whose sole support was to arise from foreign potentates, and who was to be kept on his throne by German forces, -in short, that the king of France was to be a viceroy to the Emperor and the king of Prussia. It was the first time that foreign powers, interfer ing in the concerns of a nation divided into parties, have thought proper to thrust wholly out of their councils, to postpone, to discountenance, to reject, and, in a manner, to disgrace, the party whom those powers came to support. The single person of a king cannot be a party. Woe to the king who is himself his party! The royal party, with the king or his representatives at its head, is the royal cause. Foreign powers have hitherto chosen to give to such wars as this the appearance of a civil contest, and not that of an hostile invasion. When the Spaniards, in the sixteenth century, sent aids to the chiefs of the League, they appeared as allies to that league, and to the imprisoned king (the Cardinal de Bourbon) which that league had set up. When the Germans came to the aid of the Protestant princes, in the same series of civil wars, they came as allies. When the English came to the aid of Henry the Fourth, they appeared as allies to that prince. So did the French always, when they intermeddled in the affairs of Germany: they came to aid a party there. When the English and Dutch intermeddled in the succession of Spain, they appeared as allies to the Emperor, Charles the Sixth. In short, the policy has been as uniform as its principles were obvious to an ordinary eye. According to all the old principles of law and policy, a regency ought to have been appointed by the French princes of the blood, nobles, and parliaments, and then recognized by the combined powers. Fundamental law and ancient usage, as well as the clear reason of the thing, have always ordained it during an imprisonment of the king of France: as in the case of John, and of Francis the First. A monarchy ought not to be left a moment without a representative having an interest in the succession. The orders of the state ought also to have been recognized in those amongst whom alone they existed in free dom, that is, in the emigrants. Thus, laying down a firm foundation on the recognition of the authorities of the kingdom of France, according to Nature and to its fundamental laws, and not according to the novel and inconsiderate principles of the usurpation which the united powers were come to extirpate, the king of Prussia and the Emperor, as allies of the ancient kingdom of France, would have proceeded with dignity, first, to free the monarch, if possible,—if not, to secure the monarchy as principal in the design; and in order to avoid all risks to that great object, (the object of other ages than the present, and of other countries than that of France,) they would of course avoid proceeding with more haste or in a different manner than what the nature of such an object required. Adopting this, the only rational system, the rational mode of proceeding upon it was to commence with an effective siege of Lisle, which the French generals must have seen taken before their faces, or be forced to fight. A plentiful country of friends, from whence to draw supplies, would have been behind them; a plentiful country of enemies, from whence to force. supplies, would have been before them. Good towns were always within reach to deposit their hospitals and magazines. The march from Lisle to Paris is through a less defensible country, and the distance is hardly so great as from Longwy to Paris. If the old politic and military ideas had governed, the advanced guard would have been formed of those who best knew the country and had some interest in it, supported by some of the best light troops and light artillery, whilst the grand solid body of an army dis ciplined to perfection proceeded leisurely, and in close connection with all its stores, provisions, and heavy cannon, to support the expedite body in case of misadventure, or to improve and complete its success. The direct contrary of all this was put in practice. In consequence of the original sin of this project, the army of the French princes was everywhere thrown into the rear, and no part of it brought forward to the last moment, the time of the commencement of the secret negotiation. This naturally made an ill impression on the people, and furnished an occasion for the rebels at Paris to give out that the faithful subjects of the king were distrusted, despised, and abhorred by his allies. The march was directed through a skirt of Lorraine, and thence into a part of Champagne, the Duke of Brunswick leaving all the strongest places behind him, — leaving also behind him the strength of his artillery,—and by this means giving a superiority to the French, in the only way in which the present France is able to oppose a German force. In consequence of the adoption of those false politics, which turned everything on the king's sole and single person, the whole plan of the war was reduced to nothing but a coup de main, in order to set that prince at liberty. If that failed, everything was to be given up. The scheme of a coup de main might (under favora ble circumstances) be very fit for a partisan at the head of a light corps, by whose failure nothing material would be deranged. But for a royal army of eighty thousand men, headed by a king in person, who was to march an hundred and fifty miles through an enemy's country, — surely, this was a plan unheard of. Although this plan was not well chosen, and proceeded upon principles altogether ill-judged and impolitic, the superiority of the military force might in a great degree have supplied the defects, and furnished a corrective to the mistakes. The greater probability was, that the Duke of Brunswick would make his way to Paris over the bellies of the rabble of drunkards, robbers, assassins, rioters, mutineers, and half-grown boys, under the ill-obeyed command of a theatrical, vaporing, reduced captain of cavalry, who opposed that great commander and great army. But Diis aliter visum. He began to treat, the winds blew and the rains beat, the house fell, because it was built upon sand,—and great was the fall thereof. This march was not an exact copy of either of the two marches made by the Duke of Parma into France. - There is some secret. Sickness and weather may defeat an army pursuing a wrong plan: not that I believe the sickness to have been so great as it has been reported; but there is a great deal of superfluous humiliation in this business, a perfect prodigality of disgrace. Some advantage, real or imaginary, must compensate to a great sovereign and to a great general for so immense a loss of reputation. Longwy, situated as it is, might (one should think) be evacuated without a capitulation with a republic just proclaimed by the king of Prussia as an usurping and rebellious body. He was not far from Luxembourg. He might have taken away the obnoxious French in his flight. It does not appear to have been necessary that those magistrates who declared for their own king, on the faith and under the immediate protection of the king of Prussia, should be |