of a gradual extension of political rights among all classes of his subjects. The Bourbon throne, if rescued in 1792, would have had chances of stability such as did not exist for it in 1814, and seem never likely to be found again in France.
Serving under Kellerman on that day was one who experienced, perhaps the most deeply of all men, the changes for good and for evil which the French Revolution has produced. He who, in his second exile, bore the name of the Count de Neuilly in this country, and who lately was Louis Philippe, King of the French, figured in the French lines at Valmy as a young and gallant officer, cool and sagacious beyond his years, and trusted accordingly by Kellerman and Dumouriez with an important station in the national army. The Duc de Chartres (the title he then bore) commanded the French right, General Valence was on the left, and Kellerman himself took his post in the centre, which was the strength and key of his position.
Besides these celebrated men who were in the French army, and besides the King of Prussia, the Duke of Brunswick, and other men of rank and power who were in the lines of the allies, there was an individual present at the battle of Valmy, of little political note, but who has exercised, and exercises, a greater influence over the human mind, and whose fame is more widely spread than that of either duke, or general, or king. This was the German poet, Göthe, then in early youth, and who had, out of curiosity, accompanied the allied army on its march into France as a mere spectator. He has given us a curious record of the sensations which he experienced during the cannonade. It must be remembered that many thousands in the French ranks then, like Göthe, felt the "cannon-fever" for the first time. The German poet says,[1]
"I had heard so much of the cannon fever, that I wanted to know what kind of thing it was. Ennui, and a spirit which every kind of danger excites to daring, nay, even to rashness, induced me to ride up quite coolly to the outwork of La Lune. This was again occupied by our people; but it presented the wildest aspect. The roofs were shot to pieces, the corn-shocks scattered about, the bodies of men mortally wounded stretched upon them here and there, and occasionally a spent cannon ball fell and rattled among the ruins of the tile roofs.
- ↑ Göthe's "Campaign in France in 1792," Farie's translation, p. 77.
