Page:A Tour Through the Batavian Republic.djvu/42

This page has been validated.
30
TOUR THROUGH

as the French are universally allowed to be, of doing prodigious execution in the close ranks of an enemy. The successes of the French in Germany and Italy are pretty confidently attributed to the vast superiority of their artillery; but, though they have brought that branch of military science to a high degree of perfection, I am persuaded they are less indebted to it for their victories, than to the superior numbers which they have always brought into the field, and the extraordinary genius of their military leaders.

Chorié is a lively Frenchman from Languedoc, though I should rather have supposed from Gascony, who has seen much service in various quarters of the globe, and is firmly attached to the revolution. I know not how to reconcile the assiduous attention which he pays us, and the many civilities we receive at his hands, with the rooted animosity which he bears to the English nation. We are a people against whom he could wage eternal war. Yet there are many individuals of our nation, for whom he either entertains a