[Year 2
fell, fracturing his leg; and lay there, moaning, till day dawned, till you could discern clearly that he was not a Portent but a Representative.[1]
Or see Saint-Just, in the Lines of Weissembourg, though physically of a timid apprehensive nature, how he charges with his 'Alsatian Peasants armed hastily' for the nonce; the solemn face of him blazing into flame; his black hair and tricolor hat-taffeta flowing in the breeze! These our Lines of Weissembourg were indeed forced, and Prussia and the Emigrants rolled through: but we re-force the Lines of Weissembourg; and Prussia and the Emigrants roll back again still faster,—hurled with bayonet-charges and fiery ça-ira-ing.
Ci-devant Sergeant Pichegru, ci-devant Sergeant Hoche, risen now to be Generals, have done wonders here. Tall Pichegru was meant for the Church; was Teacher of Mathematics once, in Brienne School,—his remarkablest pupil there was the Boy Napoleon Buonaparte. He then, not in the sweetest humour, enlisted, exchanging ferula for musket; and had got the length of the halberd, beyond which nothing could be hoped; when the Bastille barriers falling made passage for him, and he is here. Hoche bore a hand at the literal overturn of the Bastille; he was, as we saw, a Sergeant of the Gardes Françaises, spending his pay in rushlights and cheap editions of books. How the Mountains are burst, and many an Enceladus is disimprisoned; and Captains founding on Four parchments of Nobility are blown with their parchments across the Rhine, into Lunar Limbo!
What high feats of arms, therefore, were done in these Fourteen Armies; and how, for love of Liberty and hope of Promotion, lowborn valour cut its desperate way to Generalship; and, from the central Carnot in Salut Public to the outmost drummer on the Frontiers, men strove for their Republic, let Readers fancy. The snows of Winter, the
- ↑ His Narrative (in Deux Amis, xiv. 177–86).
