Auxonne every morning at four o'clock, for Dôle: after looking over the proofs, he partakes of an extremely frugal breakfast with Joly, and immediately prepares for returning to his Garrison; where he arrives before noon, having thus walked above twenty miles in the course of the morning.'
This Sublieutenant can remark that, in drawing-rooms, on streets, on highways, at inns, everywhere men's minds are ready to kindle into a flame. That a Patriot, if he appear in the drawing-room, or amid a group of officers, is liable enough to be discouraged, so great is the majority against him: but no sooner does he get into the street, or among the soldiers, than he feels again as if the whole Nation were with him. That after the famous Oath, To the King, to the Nation, and Law, there was a great change; that before this, if ordered to fire on the people, he for one would have done it in the King's name; but that after this, in the Nation's name, he would not have done it. Likewise that the Patriot officers, more numerous too in the Artillery and Engineers than elsewhere, were few in number; yet that having the soldiers on their side, they ruled the regiment; and did often deliver the Aristocrat-brother officer out of peril and strait. One day, for example, 'a member of our own mess roused the mob, by singing, from the windows of our dining-room, O Richard, O my King; and I had to snatch him from their fury.'[1]
All which let the reader multiply by ten thousand; and spread it, with slight variations, over all the camps and garrisons of France. The French Army seems on the verge of universal mutiny.
Universal mutiny! There is in that what may well make Patriot Constitutionalism and an august Assembly shudder. Something behoves to be done; yet what to do no man can tell. Mirabeau proposes even that the Soldiery, having come to such a pass, be forthwith disbanded, the whole Two Hundred
- ↑ Norvins, Histoire de Napoléon, i. 47; Las Cases, Mémoires (translated into Hazlitt's Life of Napoleon, i. 23–31).
